AI training vs. inference: what's the difference?

This post clarifies the fundamental differences between AI training and inference, detailing their distinct hardware needs, optimization techniques, costs, and performance metrics (TTFT, TPOT, throughput, latency). It outlines the model lifecycle from pre-training to serving and highlights Baseten's role in maximizing hardware efficiency through GPU batching, multi-cloud management, and applying advanced optimization techniques like custom kernels, KV cache optimization, and speculative decoding for efficient inference.