Words Are Secretly Numbers

Here is a fun secret. A computer cannot actually read the word cat. To a computer, letters are just squiggles on a screen. It only really understands numbers.

So when you type a message to an AI, something sneaky happens. Every word gets turned into a number first. Then the AI thinks about the numbers. Then it picks new numbers and turns those back into words for you.

Tiny word parts called tokens

It is even a little wilder than that. The computer does not always use one number per word. Sometimes it chops words into small pieces called tokens. The word playing might be split into play and ing, each with its own number.

• cat might be one token
• unhappiness might be three tokens: un, happy, ness
• short common words usually get their own token
• strange or long words get chopped up

Try it in your head

Imagine the sentence I love pizza. A computer might turn it into the numbers 15, 203, 4902. That tiny number sentence is what the AI actually thinks about. Wild, right?

“In the computer's world, Shakespeare is just a very long list of numbers.”

The big idea: every word you type becomes a number. AI thinks in numbers, then translates back to words so we can read its answer.