How AI Processes Your Request
From your question to the AI's answer - a simple guide to what happens behind the scenes
You Ask a Question
Everything starts when you type a question or request, like "What's the weather today?" or "Write a poem about cats."
Example:
"Explain how rainbows work"
Tokenization
Your question gets broken down into small pieces called "tokens." Think of tokens like puzzle pieces that make up your message.
For English text, tokens are often parts of words or single words. For example, "rainbow" might be one token, while "understanding" might be split into "under" and "standing".
Encoding
Each token is converted into a set of numbers (a vector) that the AI can understand. Think of this as translating words into the AI's native language - math!
These number sets contain hundreds or thousands of values, capturing different aspects of what the word means and how it's used.
Transformer Processing
The encoded tokens travel through the AI's "brain" - the transformer. This is where the real magic happens:
Self-Attention: Making Connections
Each token "looks" at all the other tokens to understand how they relate to each other. This helps the AI understand that in "rainbow colors," the word "rainbow" is connected to "colors."
Darker colors show stronger connections between words.
Processing Layers: Building Understanding
Your input passes through many layers of the transformer (sometimes over 100!). Each layer refines the AI's understanding of your question, like looking at it from different angles.
Response Generation
After processing your question, the AI begins crafting a response. It looks at your input and predicts what should come next, one token at a time.
Final output: "Rainbows form when sunlight enters water droplets in the air. The light bends (refracts) as it enters the droplet, then reflects off the back of the droplet, and finally bends again as it leaves. This splits the white light into its different colors, creating the colorful arc we see in the sky."
The AI generates each new word based on all the previous words, both in your question and in its own growing answer.
Learn more about response generationYou See the Answer
Finally, the AI's response is translated back into human-readable text and displayed to you.
All of this happens in just seconds, even though the AI is processing enormous amounts of information!