An AI writes one little piece at a time. It never knows the whole sentence up front — it only ever picks what comes next.
Words get cut into pieces #
The pieces are called tokens. A short word is usually one piece. A long word breaks into a few.
It's read a mountain of text #
It has seen, over and over, which piece usually follows which. That's all the "knowing" it really does.
It scores every possible piece #
Not one answer — a whole list, each with a score. "jelly" scores highest here. "rocks" barely registers, but it still gets a number.
Pick one #
Usually the top score wins. Sometimes it rolls dice weighted toward the tall ones instead — just enough to keep the writing from sounding the same every time.
Do that a few hundred times #
Score the list, pick a winner, glue it onto the end — then ask again with the whole longer line. Watch the table underneath update each round as a new piece gets picked and stitched on. No plan, no outline — just the next little piece, guessed over and over, until it decides to stop. Next token prediction — that's the real name for it.