the.com/encoder
Turns meaning into numbers so machines can pretend to understand you.
means A device or program that converts information from one format into another — usually turning signals, text, or data into a coded form a machine can store, transmit, or process.
from Built from 'code' plus the agentive suffix '-er,' with 'en-' tacked on front to mean 'put into.' 'Code' itself traces back to Latin 'codex,' a block of wood split into tablets for writing — the ancestor of both 'codex' the book and 'code' the system of symbols. So an encoder is, at root, something that does the putting-into-the-tablet — turning raw meaning into the wooden-block rules machines can read.
- vs decoder
- reads input, doesn't generate output
- bert's job
- encoder-only, built to understand not speak
- output form
- dense vectors, not words
- hardware analog
- rotary encoders turn motion into digital signals too