Token

A chunk of text, often a word or part of a word, that a language model reads and writes.

Language models handle this with attention: each token (a word or a piece of a word; the next lesson shows how text is split up) looks back at the tokens before it and decides how much each one matters right now.
From Attention, step “What does “it” mean?”

See it in action

Try token hands-on in the lesson Attention, part of the AI fundamentals course.

Open the lesson