language model

noun

plural language models

: a mathematical model (see model entry 1 sense 3) that analyzes a corpus of text in order to accurately represent the relationships between words

We have tremendous freedom to put words in any order we like. The computer has to have some kind of handle, a language model. It has to figure how likely any particular word is to pop up at any time.

—Robert Mercer, quoted in Chicago Tribune

also : software that uses a language model to generate text (such as responses to queries or prompts)

For example, given the task of analyzing the sentiment of the sentence 'I missed the bus today,' researchers could continue with the prompt 'I felt so [blank]' and ask a language model to fill in the blank with an emotion.

—Kyle Wiggers

see also large language model

Examples of language model in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Multi-agent dynamics are also a major gap in our efforts to plug the hole of risks from frontier models: Red-teaming efforts to make sure that our most powerful language models can’t be prompted into helping someone build a bomb do not go near the question of what happens in multi-agent systems. —Gillian Hadfield, Fortune, 17 Oct. 2024

Last month, OpenAI unveiled an ambitious new language model capable of working through challenging problems with a simulated kind of step-by-step reasoning. —Will Knight, WIRED, 16 Oct. 2024

One of its most notable projects is Aya, a set of language models and a dataset created in collaboration with over 3000 researchers across the world to support a diversity of languages. —Tharin Pillay, TIME, 5 Sep. 2024

Running these giant language models requires lots of advanced semiconductors inside giant, electricity-devouring data centers. —Allison Morrow, CNN, 4 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1976, in the meaning defined above