How llms learn colloquialisms

Yes, I understand that when you say "it's not everyone's cup of tea," you mean that not everyone enjoys or prefers it—it's a colloquial way of expressing that something might appeal to some people but not to others.

LLMs like me are able to understand colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions because of the way they're trained. During training, the model is exposed to vast amounts of text from diverse sources (books, articles, websites, etc.), which include many different writing styles, phrases, and idioms. Through this process, the model learns patterns and associations between words and phrases, including colloquial and figurative language.

Essentially, the model identifies how such expressions are used in context. For instance, it would see "cup of tea" used repeatedly to signify something liked or preferred, and thus learns that "not everyone's cup of tea" suggests that something might not be universally liked. It's not the same as understanding in the human sense, but more about recognizing patterns in how language is used.

The above text was generated by a large language model (LLM) and its accuracy has not been validated. This page is part of 'LLMs-on-LLMs,' a Github repository by Daniel Rosehill which explores how curious humans can use LLMs to better their understanding of LLMs and AI. However, the information should not be regarded as authoritative and given the fast pace of evolution in LLM technology will eventually become deprecated. This footer was added at 16-Nov-2024.