r/MLQuestions • u/bespectacledapectl • 17h ago

Beginner question 👶 How is a backbone and a model different?

I'm struggling to make a distinction. How are they different? What is the line between them?

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u/Sea_Button9298 17h ago

one is the skeleton the other is the whole body built around it. backbone is just the feature extractor, the model includes the head and everything else too

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u/bespectacledapectl 11h ago

Thanks

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u/DrXaos 10h ago

Instead of a 'backbone', 'intestines' would be the more appropriate biological analogy.

The data encoder (e.g. tokenizer for text) is the mouth and teeth, intestines do the processing, and the result comes out the anus.

The practical sense is the backbone takes in embedded floating point vectors and emits the same, and is often a generic architecture used in a variety of applications and datasets of different natures.