Interactive · concept 3
Words don't have fixed meanings.
The same word can mean very different things. A model works out which one by looking at the words around it. That looking has a name: attention.
Tap a word to see what it pays attention to
Watch how “bank” leans on “steep” to mean a hillside, not money.
Meaning isn't in the word. It's in the company the word keeps, and attention is how the model reads that company before writing the next one.
The book behind this newsletter
Just Predicting Words
How ChatGPT, Claude, and Modern AI Actually Work
The trick is small. The world it built is not.