What is a token?
A very foundational concept
In the context of ChatGPT, a token refers to a sequence of characters or symbols that represents a word or a part of a sentence. ChatGPT is a language model that uses machine learning algorithms to generate responses to user input, and it operates on a token level.
When a user inputs a sentence or a query, ChatGPT tokenizes the input by breaking it down into individual words or symbols. Each token is then analyzed and used by the machine learning algorithm to generate an appropriate response. The tokens help ChatGPT understand the context and meaning of the input and produce a more accurate and relevant response.
You can essentially think of tokens as pieces of words used for natural language processing. For English text, 1 token is approximately 4 characters or 0.75 words. As a point of reference, the collected works of Shakespeare are about 900,000 words or 1.2M tokens.