What happens when you send a message.
THE SEQUENCE
Your message, plus the conversation so far, is sent to a large language model The model generates a response The response appears, and is added to the conversation
WHAT THIS EXPLAINS
Why it remembers earlier messages in a conversation: they are sent each time.
Why a new conversation knows nothing about the previous one.
Why very long conversations eventually lose their beginning.
WHAT THE MODEL IS
A large language model trained on a very large amount of text.
It predicts what text should come next, which turns out to produce useful writing, explanation and analysis.
WHAT IT IS NOT
A database. It does not look things up unless the feature is enabled.
A reasoning engine in any reliable sense.
WHY IT SOMETIMES GETS THINGS WRONG
It produces plausible text. Plausible and true are different, and the tone is the same either way.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
Verify anything factual. Use it for language and thinking; supply the facts yourself.
