AI article
What ChatGPT is actually doing when it answers you
Community description: It doesn't "understand" you. It does one thing, over and over: guess the next token, append it, guess...
Dev.to | Sep 12, 2026 | Shohruh Sharipov
Automated excerpt
It does one thing, over and over: guess the next token, append it, guess again. Meaning is geometry — words become vectors; "king" sits near "queen". Temperature is why the same prompt gives different answers. The context window is why it "forgets" — the oldest text literally falls off. Hallucination is the model doing its job (plausible text) where plausible ≠ true.
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