AI Glossary
What is a transformer in AI?
Transformer: The transformer is the neural-network architecture behind modern AI. Its "attention" mechanism lets a model weigh every word against every other word at once.
In plain English
Older models read text like a narrow flashlight moving left to right, forgetting as they went. The transformer (introduced in the 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need") reads the whole passage at once and learns which words matter to which — letting "it" connect to the right noun three sentences back. That one idea scaled, and everything since is built on it.
Why it matters
- The "T" in GPT: Generative Pretrained Transformer
- Attention is why models handle long-range references and nuance
- Scales beautifully with more data and compute — the engine of the AI boom
A concrete example
In "The trophy didn't fit in the suitcase because it was too big", attention is what lets the model figure out that "it" means the trophy.
Related terms
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