foundation model

noun

UK /faʊnˈdeɪʃən ˈmɒdəl/

US /faʊnˈdeɪʃən ˈmɑːdəl/

A foundation model is a very big computer brain that learns from lots of information and can then help with many different jobs.

The app uses a foundation model to answer questions, write stories, and translate languages.

SYNONYMS

base model general-purpose model large pretrained model backbone model

RELATED WORDS

artificial intelligence machine learning neural network training data large language model

OTHER MEANINGS

2. A model that serves as the starting point for building many specialized applications.

Developers fine-tuned the foundation model for medical image analysis.

3. A large AI system trained on broad data that can be adapted to many downstream tasks.

The company released its foundation model to researchers for adaptation.

4. The core pretrained network on which smaller task-specific models are built.

Their chatbot is a lightweight version of a much larger foundation model.