How does ChatGPT work?

Google, Wolfram Alpha, and ChatGPT all interact with users via a single line text entry field and provide text results. Google returns search results, a list of web pages and articles that will (hopefully) provide information related to the search queries. Wolfram Alpha generally provides mathematically and data analysis-related answers. ChatGPT, by contrast, provides a response based on the context and intent behind a user's question. You can't, for example, ask Google to write a story or ask Wolfram Alpha to write a code module, but ChatGPT can do these sorts of things. Fundamentally, Google's power is the ability to do enormous database lookups and provide a series of matches.