AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard are certainly having a moment—the next generation of conversational software tools promise to do everything from taking over our web searches to producing an endless supply of creative literature to remembering all the world’s knowledge so we don’t have to.

ChatGPT, Google Bard, and other bots like them, are examples of large language models, or LLMs, and it’s worth digging into how they work. It means you’ll be able to better make use of them, and have a better appreciation of what they’re…