You hear these words everywhere: in ads, at the coffee machine, from your nephew who "knows about this stuff". The problem is, they're often used the wrong way. Here are seven AI terms set straight, one sentence each.
The words we think we understand
Model What people often say: "ChatGPT is a model." The truth: a model is the engine. It's the trained brain that predicts the next word. ChatGPT is the application built around the engine. A bit like the difference between a car engine and the car itself.
Agent What people often say: "An agent is just a chatbot with a different name." The truth: a chatbot answers. An agent acts. It has a specific role, tools, and it completes a task end to end (sorting your emails, preparing a quote). It's the difference between a switchboard and an assistant who does the work.
Prompt What people often say: "You need to know the secret prompts." The truth: a prompt is simply your instruction. The sentence you type. There's no magic formula: a clear request beats a complicated recipe found on the internet.
The words that scare people (for no good reason)
Token What people often say: "A token is a word." The truth: a token is a piece of a word. "Hello" can count as two. It's the unit the AI uses to measure what it reads and writes, a bit like counting in syllables instead of words. It's mostly used to calculate costs.
Hallucination What people often say: "The AI hallucinates, so it's buggy." The truth: a hallucination is when the AI makes up a wrong answer and states it with full confidence. It's not a bug: it's a machine that guesses, and sometimes guesses wrong. Which is why you should always approve anything that goes out into the world.
An AI doesn't know when it's wrong. You're the one who stays in control. Always.
The words that make the real difference
Context What people often say: "Context is just the conversation history." The truth: context is everything the AI knows about you at the moment it answers. Your line of work, your clients, the way you write. With most tools, you provide it all over again every time. With a business brain like chyll, you describe your business once and it remembers it for all your requests.
Integration What people often say: "An integration is a technical thing for developers." The truth: an integration is just a bridge between two tools. Your inbox and your AI. Your invoicing software and your AI. These days it often takes one click, without touching a line of code.
There you go. Seven words, seven misconceptions cleared up. You don't need to become an engineer to use AI. You just need to know what people are talking about, so you never feel intimidated again.