Transformer
Definition The neural network architecture behind modern language models, introduced by Google researchers in 2017. Its attention mechanism lets a model weigh how every word in a passage relates to every other, enabling fluent long-form text.
In more depth
Transformers replaced earlier architectures that processed text strictly one word at a time, making it practical to train on vastly larger datasets in parallel. The self-attention mechanism is what lets models track references and context across long documents. Nearly every prominent generative AI system is built on this architecture; the letter T in GPT stands for transformer.
Further reading: Wikipedia.
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