this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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[–] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What is a token, anyway? I've never seen any mention of them with GPT.

[–] ozoned@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Excellent question. I have absolutely NO idea. Friend helped me set one up on my PC and it even churns through "tokens" on my GPU. So I have zero clue. :D I guess I could ask "AI". lol

[–] Jiral@lemmy.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Tokens are what an LLM actually predicts, one after another. If you have very slow models that produce less than 5 tokens/s or so, you can easily follow it with your own eyes. A token is what appears at once. Often it is an entire word but it can also be parts of a word or individual letters, digits, special signs for uncommone words or special formatting, number stuff.

[–] tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone -1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It's the ai industry's made up In game currency. That flat monthly fee they're trying to get rid of was basically the season pass

It's all fraud and gambling! :D

[–] ozoned@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lol this is how I explained it to my wife. Like how arcades all have these money cards now.

[–] tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

basically the same mechanism. I'm heavily assuming they actually took inspo from the game industry

[–] ozoned@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So gross. Obfuscation of currency so you have no clue how much you're actually spending. aka gambling imo.

[–] tutter@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 months ago
[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 points 2 months ago

Short answer is that a token equates to a unit of work. I strongly suspect that the definition has been becoming less and less tangible as the bubble has inflated though