Self-attention
Attention computed among positions within the same sequence.
What Self-attention does not show
It helps a model relate distant words, but it does not remove context limits or guarantee coherent long-document reasoning.
Terms this definition uses
Related terms in Models and generation
How a model produces text, what its training and decoding controls change, and what none of them can prove about a source.
Autoregressive model · Transformer · Attention · Parameter · Inference · Pretraining · Fine-tuning · Supervised fine-tuning · Instruction tuning · RLHF · Preference optimization · Knowledge distillation · Quantization · Mixture of experts · Multimodal model · Vision-language model · Small language model · Tokenizer · Temperature · Top-p sampling · Deterministic decoding · System prompt · Developer message · Tool call · Function calling · Structured output · Constrained decoding · Chain of thought · Reasoning trace · Context caching · Context compaction · Model routing · Model drift · Model version
Questions about Self-attention
What is Self-attention?
Attention computed among positions within the same sequence.
What does Self-attention not show or guarantee?
It helps a model relate distant words, but it does not remove context limits or guarantee coherent long-document reasoning.
Which area of the glossary does Self-attention belong to?
Models and generation: How a model produces text, what its training and decoding controls change, and what none of them can prove about a source.
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
Free browser extension
See this on any site you visit, in one click.
CrawlCheck for Chrome grades every site you visit A–F and shows, from your own browser, what search engines and AI assistants are actually served. Free, no account.