DadgogoAI Dictionary

Dictionary entry

sampling

noun \ˈsam-pliŋ\
TopicModels & Behavior Senses1

Definition of sampling

  1. : the way a model picks each next token from its list of possible choices, which decides how predictable or varied the text is

    • Greedy sampling always takes the single most likely token.
    • Change the sampling settings and the same prompt gives different stories.

Two meanings, one word

In everyday English

Choosing a small part of something to test or represent the whole; in music, reusing part of a recording.

In AI

The way a model picks each next token from its list of possible choices, which decides how predictable or varied the text is.

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Which of these is the meaning of sampling?

Related terms

temperature a setting that controls how random a model's output is: low temperature gives safer, more… top-p a sampling setting that lets a model choose only from the most likely next tokens whose… token the basic unit of text a language model reads and writes: a whole word, part of a word, a… speculative decoding a technique for speeding up autoregressive model inference in which a faster draft process… flow matching a method for training a continuous generative model by teaching it the vector field that moves… discrete diffusion a diffusion-model approach for categorical or other discrete data that learns to reverse a… GFlowNet a generative learning method that constructs objects through sequences of actions and learns… constrained decoding a generation technique that restricts which tokens a language model may choose at each…

Cite this entry

"Sampling." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/sampling/. Accessed 13 Oct. 2026.

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