Stanford CS336 Language Modeling from Scratch | Spring 2026 | Lecture 1: Overview, Tokenization

Channel: Stanford Online

Duration: 1:19:22

The Big Picture

This lecture kicks off Stanford's CS336 by establishing the importance of understanding language models from the ground up. The professors argue the need for building models from scratch to fully appreciate and critique AI models, particularly in the murky waters of industrialized, expensive frontier models. Tokenization is explored in detail, highlighting its importance in shaping data into digestible tokens for computational models.

Chapter Breakdown

Highlights

Quote of the Moment

If you're really interested in fundamental research, by simply prompting a model, you're vastly constraining the set of options, the design space you're looking at.

Controversial Takes

Is It Clickbait?

Clickbait verdict: Not Clickbait! — Not Clickbait!

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