AI / A CONCEPT NOTE
Base Model
the foundational pre-trained model
Overview · mechanism
pitfall · examples
01 / THE SHORT VERSION
The idea in a few sentences.
A raw, pre-trained model that has general language knowledge but has not yet been fine-tuned to follow instructions or act as a conversational assistant.
02 / FOLLOW THE MECHANISM
How the base model resumes
Input string
user provides start: 'Once upon a time...'
Predict next
base model continues text in style of training data.
Output
completes paragraph in a creative writing style.
04 / COMMAND NOTES
Read the command, then the result.
Inspect the flags and arguments before trying an example. Snippets can need local setup, replacement values, or resources in your own environment.
inspect base text model details
ollama show llama3:text05 / CHECK YOURSELF
Could you explain Base Model to a teammate?
Try it out loud in two sentences: what it is, and the one detail that changes the picture. If you stall, the gap is the part to reread.
Up next in AI engineeringInstruction Tuningfine-tuning to follow instructions