Meet Rufus

Imagine sitting down at your computer and opening your favourite AI chat app.

You type:

“Hello, I’m Tom.”

A moment later, the answer appears:

“Hi Tom. I’m Rufus, your friendly assistant.”

You continue talking back and forth. Rufus remembers things you said earlier, answers your questions, and offers to help with work on your computer.

Before long, it can feel as if Rufus lives inside your computer, knows everything about you, and does the work himself.

None of that is true.

Rufus is the part that creates the words in each reply. This part is called a large language model, usually shortened to LLM. It is only one piece of the larger process. Everything else happens around it.