Applied AI

Course map · S1 How LLMs work · Episode 2 of 12

Tokens

S1 E2 Explainer · 15 slides · 29 September 2026

  1. Slide 1 of 15, Cover.
  2. Slide 2 of 15, Why it matters.
  3. Slide 3 of 15, Mental model.
  4. Slide 4 of 15, Concepts.
  5. Slide 5 of 15, Concepts.
  6. Slide 6 of 15, Data.
  7. Slide 7 of 15, Data.
  8. Slide 8 of 15, For engineers.
  9. Slide 9 of 15, Where it breaks.
  10. Slide 10 of 15, For engineers.
  11. Slide 11 of 15, For engineers.
  12. Slide 12 of 15, In practice.
  13. Slide 13 of 15, For leaders.
  14. Slide 14 of 15, Decision rule.
  15. Slide 15 of 15, Series map.

Lesson notes

Tokens are the unit every model reads, writes, and bills in, and one sentence can need up to 9.2 times as many tokens in Amharic as in English.

Decision rule

Budget, limit, and price in tokens, measured on your own traffic in every language you serve.

Ideas in this lesson

  • Tokens
  • Token cost
  • Tokeniser
  • Reasoning

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