How ChatGPT Actually Works
10 min
What you will learn
- Explain the GPT architecture including transformers, attention, and token prediction
- Describe the three-stage training pipeline: pretraining, SFT, and RLHF
- Compare GPT-4o, o1, and GPT-4o mini by capability, speed, and cost
- Define temperature, tokens, and hallucination and explain why each matters
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Knowledge check
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Key takeaway
ChatGPT is a next-token prediction engine refined with human feedback — understanding this helps you write prompts that play to its strengths and avoid its weaknesses.