# Decoder-Only Transformer **Entity class:** AI model class **Domain:** Artificial intelligence / Model architecture **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A decoder-only transformer predicts successive tokens from prior context and forms the dominant architecture behind many general-purpose language models. ## Mechanism and significance Its flexibility supports open-ended generation, but bounded classification may consume more latency and compute than a model designed to emit one structured decision. ## Relationships - **Research dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] - **Ontology route:** [[ASI and RSI Timeline Ontology#Model Architecture and Compute Economics|Model Architecture and Compute Economics]] - **Primary fields:** [[Machine Intelligence]] · [[AI Infrastructure]] · [[Compute Race]] - **Adjacent concepts:** [[Specialist Model]] · [[Encoder-Only Model]] · [[BERT Encoder]] · [[Embedding Model]] ## Sources and provenance - [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — immediate source for this node's role in the broadcast research map. ## Evidence boundary The research dossier establishes why this entity or concept belongs in the Moonshots ontology. Time-sensitive organizational, product, policy, and performance claims should be checked against the linked primary source or a current authoritative source before reuse as settled fact.