machine made worldsA journal of artificial intelligence

Ideas, collected

Essays.

Essays, guides and observations. Find something worth sitting with.

13 articles

What is Vector database?

A vector database stores embedding vectors so search finds meaning, not keywords. How similarity indexes work and how builders use them.

1 min read↗

What is System prompt?

A system prompt is the hidden instruction block that sets a model's role, rules, and tone. What it controls and how builders shape it.

1 min read↗

What is Context window?

A context window is the stretch of tokens a model can read at once. What sets its size, what happens past the edge, and how builders fit work inside it.

1 min read↗

What is Hallucination?

Hallucination: a fluent model answer that sounds true but is not grounded in sources. Why models invent facts and how builders stop it.

1 min read↗

What is Benchmark?

Benchmark: a fixed test suite scoring models on the same tasks so results compare. What good suites measure and where they mislead.

1 min read↗

What is Temperature?

Temperature is the sampling dial for token randomness. What low and high settings do, and where builders set it for fact vs flair.

1 min read↗

What is Inference?

Inference turns a trained model plus a fresh prompt into an answer. How serving differs from training, latency and cost budgets.

1 min read↗

What is Quantization?

Quantization stores model weights in fewer bits to fit small GPUs and laptops. Accuracy-vs-speed tradeoffs and when builders use it.

1 min read↗

What is Fine-tuning?

Fine-tuning keeps training a ready model on focused examples for one task or style. What changes, what it costs, prompting vs tuning.

1 min read↗

What is Embeddings?

Embeddings turn text, images, or rows into number lists placing similar meanings together. How vectors are made and used for search.

1 min read↗

What is RAG?

RAG grounds a model in documents retrieved at query time instead of memory alone. How the retrieve-then-write loop works for builders.

1 min read↗

What is prompt injection?

Prompt injection hides hostile instructions in data a model reads, hijacking its task. How the trick works and builder defenses.

1 min read↗