Activities to help you learn LLMs, the AI-powered chatbots that generate text

Difficulty: Explorer (Level 1)

You might have heard of ChatGPT or DeepSeek, but do you know what this technology is called?

They are both large language models, or LLMs. This tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate text.

The tool is usually a chatbot and it can help finish sentences. It can also follow a prompt, or the instructions you give it.

Unlike humans, LLMs do not know how to think about what to write next.

Instead, it predicts future words based on the words you provide. It makes these predictions by using existing sources, including blog posts, journal articles, books and more. Using its library of data, LLMs decide what word should come next.

However, this means that LLMs are not always accurate. Sometimes, they are completely wrong because they repeat ideas fed to them.

These two activities can help you understand LLMs better.

What do you know that a chatbot, or an LLM, doesn’t? Photo: Shutterstock

You versus LLMs

Materials

• a notepad

• a pen or pencil

Instructions

1. LLMs might be able to process data faster than a person can, but do they really know more than you? Let’s brainstorm. What are the things you know that an LLM does not?

2. Write down what you think a computer or LLM might be able to learn about but never truly understand. For instance, while a computer “reads” hundreds of books about emotions, it would never understand them more than a human. What else might you know more about than a computer?

Try to imagine you’re an LLM. What might you guess about a friend and the world? Photo: Shutterstock

Think like an LLM

Materials

• a notepad

• a pen or pencil

• a friend

Instructions

1. Find a friend to do this activity with you.

2. On separate pieces of paper, write down five sentences each about yourselves. For example, you could write:

• My favourite colour is green.

• I was born in Hong Kong.

• In my free time, I enjoy painting.

3. Now, erase or cross out the last words of the sentences. Then, exchange your papers with each other. Based on what you know about your friend, try to guess what they originally wrote.

4. Now imagine you were an LLM that did not know your friend. You would still have access to a library of data and be able to predict the most common sentences. What would your guess look like? What does this show about LLMs?

5. If you want, once you’re done with this activity, ask an adult to use an AI chatbot to see what a LLM would have actually predicted.