They Got Lost in the Transformer, Episode 1: What Even Is an Embedding?

Floki struggles to understand how words become numbers—until Astrid reframes embeddings as positions in a conceptual space, where meaning comes from relationships, not labels. Through a simple equation—King minus Man plus Woman equals Queen—he realizes models don’t memorize language, they map it. The idea deepens when linked to neuroscience: our brains may represent meaning the same way. The mystery shifts from confusion to curiosity—what comes next is attention.