transformers

Noun

transformer (plural transformers)

1. Something that transforms, changing its own or another thing's shape.
2. A static device that transfers electric energy from one circuit to another by magnetic coupling; primarily used to transfer energy between different voltage levels, which allows the most appropriate voltages for power generation, transmission and distribution to be chosen separately.
   • While initial reports Thursday traced the glow to a transformer explosion or a fire, Mr. McGee said there was no fire, and there were no transformers involved.2018 December 28, Michael Gold, “How an Explosion (Not Aliens) Turned New York’s Night Sky an Electric Blue”, in The New York Times
3. (machine learning) A neural network architecture composed of layers of attention which takes sequences of tokens (representing text, images, audio, or other modalities) as input.
   • Transformer is a deep machine learning model based on the encoder–decoder network architecture and is used primarily in the field of NLP.2021, Lei Chen, Deep Learning and Practice with MindSpore, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 116
4. (derogatory, humorous, offensive, slang) A transgender person.

See all 6 meanings of transformer