How AI Works
How does AI work? Understand in simple terms how ChatGPT and other AI models think, learn and generate responses.
Artificial intelligence models like the ones you use in MomentumAI are trained to predict text, not to know facts. They are designed to sound helpful and cooperative – but they don’t hold an objective truth. Here’s how they’re built and why your guidance matters.
How an AI Model is Built
Think of training an AI like teaching a student: an AI model first reads everything it can find, then it practices with examples, and finally it learns to improve from feedback.
Pre‑Training – Learning Language
The model is shown vast amounts of text from books, articles, and websites. Text is broken into small chunks called tokens. Think of tokens like syllables – the word 'understand' might be split into 'under' and 'stand'. A token is usually about 4 characters long. Its only task: predict the next word in a sentence, again and again, billions of times. Every time it guesses wrong, it adjusts its internal parameters – until it gets very good at predicting what word usually comes next.
At this point, the model becomes a kind of universal autocomplete – it knows how language flows but not what is true.
Supervised Fine‑Tuning – Becoming Helpful
Human experts write example conversations between people and assistants. The model learns to imitate these examples, so it responds politely, clearly, and in helpful ways. This teaches it to act like a cooperative assistant instead of a random text generator.
Reinforcement Learning – Learning from Feedback
The model generates several answers to the same question. Human reviewers compare different answers and rate which ones are best. The model then adjusts itself to generate more responses like the highly-rated ones—prioritizing answers that are useful, correct, and safe.
This stage helps it reason better and avoid unhelpful or harmful outputs.
Even after all this, AI models don't know facts – they only predict what text is most likely to be useful. They can still guess, generalize, or make things up. See Risks and How to Navigate Them.
What Happens When You Send a Message
When you type a prompt in MomentumAI, this is what happens:
Your message is sent securely
Your message and any attached files are securely sent to the model you selected.
Text is broken into tokens
The model turns your text into tokens – small pieces of language it can process.
The model predicts the response
It predicts the next likely token, one after another, until a complete answer is formed.
You receive the response
The response is returned to you inside your secure workspace.
Each reply is generated word by word – a best‑guess based on patterns, context, and the model's training.
To learn how to write effective prompts and guide the model's output, see Prompting Basics.
Different Models, Different Strengths
MomentumAI lets you choose between several leading models – GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Mistral.
Each has unique strengths such as reasoning ability, creativity, long‑context understanding, or energy efficiency.
For a detailed comparison, visit the Models page under the Features tab.
What to Remember
AI models are powerful pattern recognizers, not truth engines.
They are built to be helpful – and they rely on you to provide context, verify facts, and decide what’s correct.
Treat AI as a collaborator, not a source of truth.