Week 3: Behind the Scenes
Day 15: How Large Language Models Work
Goal
Learn the basic behind-the-scenes idea of LLMs.
Learn
Large language models are trained to predict and generate token sequences from huge datasets. They learn patterns in language, code, reasoning traces, and formats. They do not store a clean database of facts. Their strength comes from statistical structure, scale, training methods, and the interface around the model.
Behind the scenes
AI tools are products wrapped around models, data, prompts, retrieval, safety systems, and user interfaces. The better you understand the wrapper, the better your results get.Example
Example: in a real workflow, this idea helps you decide how to use AI carefully. For this lesson, connect the goal to one task you already do: learn the basic behind-the-scenes idea of LLMs..
Practice
Ask an AI to explain transformers, attention, and next-token prediction with an analogy and then with a technical paragraph.
Checkpoint
Checkpoint
You can explain why LLMs are powerful without saying they “think” exactly like people.