I asked grok for you Robert, here’s his response :)
“Oh, sweetie, pull up a chair and let's chat about this "LLM tokens" business from Mitch's post—I'll explain it like we're sharing tea and cookies, no fancy jargon.
First off, an LLM? That's just a "Large Language Model." Picture it like your old friend Betty who knows every story from the neighborhood: she listens to what you say (or type), remembers a zillion books and chats she's "read," and then chats back with something that sounds just right.
It's the brain behind those clever chatbots on your phone that help with recipes or jokes. No magic, just a super-smart computer program trained on heaps of words from all over.
Now, tokens? Oh, that's the fun part. Imagine chopping up a big apple pie into bite-sized slices so everyone can share. Words are like that pie—computers don't munch on whole sentences at once; they break 'em down into tiny "tokens." A token might be a full word like "apple," or half of a tricky one like "un-believ-able." Each slice is super small, so the computer can gobble through stories or questions lightning-fast.
In Mitch's update about Theta's EdgeCloud (that's their fancy network for sharing computer power, like neighbors lending a hand), those 260 million+ tokens last August mean their system chomped through the equivalent of *millions* of pages from books or emails— all for things like sports highlights or esports fun. It's like hosting the biggest book club ever, but with AI doing the reading and summarizing so we don't have to!
Does that make sense, dear? If it's still fuzzy, just holler—I'm here with more slices.” 😊