What is Attention in AI

In this lecture, Gyula Rabai Jr. breaks down the concept of Attention, a key process that sets large language models (LLMs) apart from traditional machine learning models. Attention is what allows AI models to reason, understand context, and focus on relevant parts of input data—making it essential for tasks like language processing and prediction generation.

Key Topics:

  • Attention in AI and machine learning
  • Queries, keys, and values in the attention mechanism
  • How AI models weigh and process word predictions
  • Contextual reasoning with attention
  • Large language models and language processing

Video overview

Attention works by assigning vectors to represent the meanings of words. These vectors are then processed through a series of steps involving queries (Q), keys (K), and values (V). Each word in the sequence contributes to a prediction, and the model uses attention to figure out which predictions are most relevant to the current context. By comparing these predictions and their relevance, the model focuses on the most applicable ones and adjusts the output accordingly.

In this lecture, we explore:

  • What attention is and why it’s crucial for large language models
  • The role of queries (Q), keys (K), and values (V) in the attention mechanism
  • How the model determines relevance using similarity scores
  • The step-by-step process of how predictions are weighted and processed to generate the next word
  • How attention helps AI understand context and improves the model’s ability to reason and make accurate predictions
  • By the end of this video, you'll understand how attention works to enable large language models to process and predict text more efficiently, focusing on the most relevant parts of input data.

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