Neural Networks and LLMs: Analogies for Mortals
Neural networks are abstract. The math is dense. The scale is incomprehensible — billions of parameters, trillions of multiplications per second. But the principles are not abstract. They are built on deep patterns that show up everywhere: in orchestras, in conversations, in flocks of birds, in forests, in the way a jazz musician improvises. The goal is not to make you a machine learning engineer. The goal is to make the thing thinkable — to see that when you talk to an LLM, you are not communicating with an alien intelligence. You are interacting with something that works on principles you already understand. …