The Language of Language Machines

• llm
• alignment
• attention
• base model
• chain-of-thought
• context window
• embedding
• few shot
• fine tuning
• homogenization effects
• inference
• neural net
• pre-training
• prompt engineering
• prompt injection
• temperature
• tokenization
• transformer
• vibe coding

What is this?

The Language of Language Machines is a working group to produce a critical vocabulary for understanding contemporary (post-2015) natural language processing (NLP) literature. Said vocabulary is in-progress above: terms with a grey background are in flight within the working group.

For more information regarding our process, see Progressing the Terminology. Some work that inspires our approach:

• Parallel Distributed Processing (1987)
• The Language of Psychoanalysis, Jean Laplanche (1988)
• Computer Power and Human Reason, Joseph Weizenbaum (1976)
• Attention is All You Need (2017)

Who does this?

The working group is currently run by Lachlan Kermode and Ryan Healey. We meet weekly on Tuesdays at 3PM-4PM CET (9AM-10AM EST). Reach out to hi@ohrg.org to join.