Demystifying some of the math and jargon surrounding generative AI large language models

Here's a blog post that I found interesting:

I find this literature irritating and opaque. This is at least somewhat because I do not yet understand it well, and there's too much of it. But clearly I need to wrap my head around it, before I become technically obsolete. My scare quotes in the title of these notes thus derive in part from jealousy and fear. But only in part: the names here seem like proof positive that McDermott's critique of "wishful mnemonics" needs to be re-introduced into the basic curriculum of AI.