Foundations beginner

Training Data

The examples a model learns from — the single biggest determinant of what it can and cannot do.

Training data is the corpus used to fit a model’s parameters. Its coverage sets the model’s ceiling: gaps, errors, and skew in the data reappear as gaps, errors, and bias in the outputs. Under the EU AI Act, training data has a formal definition and, for high-risk systems, governance obligations attached.

In practice: A hiring model trained mostly on past hires from one demographic will reproduce that pattern.

Where this comes up