What are tokens and embeddings in an LLM?
☕Coffee Chat Question
Concept Made Simple
“What are tokens and embeddings in an LLM?”
🧠Mind Map Answer
Remember It Faster
A token is a chunk of text (roughly ¾ of a word). An embedding is that token turned into a list of numbers capturing its meaning.
🔥What If?
Think Beyond the Expected
Why do longer prompts cost more?
Models bill per token for both input and output. More words means more tokens to process, which means more compute and higher cost — plus you can hit the context window limit.
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Plain-language foundations
I'm preparing for a software engineering interview and want to understand this from scratch, as a beginner. Topic: Tokens (AI Basics) Interview question: "What are tokens and embeddings in an LLM?" Please: 1. Explain the core idea in simple, plain language, using an everyday analogy. 2. Define any technical terms you use. 3. Walk through one small, concrete example. 4. Finish with a single sentence I can easily remember. Keep the tone friendly and assume I'm new to this topic.
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