THE TRILLION SLIDERS

Demystifying AI Parameters

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1. The Rent Problem (The Foundation)

Before AI, we had simple math. Imagine you want to estimate apartment rent. You have a formula:
Rent = (SqFt * A) + (Floor * B).

But what if you don't know A or B? You only have historical data (the dots below). Your job is to find the "Parameters" (A and B) that make the line fit the dots.

Rent = (SqFt × 0) + (Floor × 0)
Error (Loss): High
The machine learns by minimizing Loss.
Loss = Σ (Predicted_Rent - Actual_Rent)²
The computer effectively "jiggles" the sliders automatically to make this number zero.

2. The Sound Mixer (The Neuron)

In AI, a single "Neuron" is just a fancy Rent Calculator. But instead of 2 inputs, it might have hundreds. Think of it like a sound mixing board.

The Weights are the volume faders. The Bias is the master gain.

Output: 0.00

Mode: Linear (Negative values allowed)

Training is just moving these faders until the output matches what we want. Inference is locking the faders and playing the music.

3. The Network (Mixers of Mixers)

Modern AI isn't one mixer. It's a mixer... mixing the outputs of other mixers. This layering allows it to learn complex patterns, not just straight lines.

Status: Untrained (Random Weights)

When you click "Run Training", imagine 10,000 sound engineers furiously adjusting their sliders at once to minimize the error.

4. The Transformer & The Illusion

ChatGPT doesn't have a brain. It has a Next-Token Prediction engine. It looks at context and assigns probabilities to the next word.

The Capital Of France Is
Attention Map (simplified)

Every time a word is generated, it flies back into the input, and the process repeats. It's an auto-complete that reads its own writing.

5. Scale (The Trillion)

We looked at a mixer with 4 sliders. Then a network with 50. GPT-4 has approximately 1.7 Trillion parameters.

Scroll the box below. 1 pixel height = 1 Million Parameters.

Current Depth: 0 Parameters
Rent Estimator (2 Params)
Use your imagination...
GPT-1 (110M)
GPT-2 (1.5B)
GPT-3 (175B)
Getting closer to GPT-4...

Emergent Intelligence is a conjuring trick born from the sheer magnitude of these sliders.