Many people talk about ChatGPT and automatically mean artificial intelligence.
That’s understandable. For many families, ChatGPT was their first direct contact with AI. Perhaps your child has already said, “I did my homework with ChatGPT.” Perhaps you’ve tried ChatGPT yourself, to write a text, plan a trip or get a question answered.
It’s easy to come away with the impression that ChatGPT and AI are the same thing. In fact, that isn’t the case. ChatGPT is not “the AI”. And it isn’t even the actual AI model.
Once you understand that difference, you’ll find it far easier to make sense of many later developments around artificial intelligence – and to understand better what your own children are actually using.
Why this topic matters right now
Many parents feel they’ve already fallen behind on AI. The media report on new developments almost daily, new tools appear constantly, and it often seems as though everyone else already knows exactly what they’re doing.
The reality looks rather different.
According to a survey by Digital Austria, only around 22 per cent of people in Austria rate their knowledge of artificial intelligence as good. A further 5 per cent consider their knowledge very good. Which also means that almost three quarters of the population rate their knowledge as low or non-existent.
AI knowledge in Austria
- 5% rate their knowledge as very good
- 22% rate their knowledge as good
- Around 73% see their knowledge as low or non-existent
So if you feel you don’t know everything about AI yet, you’re certainly not alone.
What’s interesting is that use is growing much faster than understanding.
More than half of people in Austria have already tried generative AI. At the same time, comparatively few use such tools regularly. Many know AI exists but are unsure what they could actually use it for, or what’s even possible.
And this is exactly where the gap between hype and competence opens up.
It becomes especially clear when you look at young people.
While many adults are still wondering whether they need AI at all, ChatGPT is already part of everyday life for a great many teenagers. Surveys show that use of ChatGPT and similar tools among young people aged 9 to 19 is now almost universal.
So for the first time we’re seeing a situation where many children use a new technology more often than their parents understand it. Parents used to explain the digital world to their children. With AI, it’s partly the other way round. That’s exactly why it’s worth understanding the basics.
AI is much bigger than ChatGPT
To understand the difference, a comparison from everyday life helps.
Imagine someone answered the question “What is a car?” with “A car is a steering wheel.” Obviously that wouldn’t be right.
A steering wheel is part of a car, but nobody would claim the whole car consists of nothing but the steering wheel. A car has many other parts: the engine, the tyres, the brakes, the bodywork, the seats and much more.
It’s much the same with ChatGPT. Many people talk about ChatGPT and automatically mean artificial intelligence. In reality, though, ChatGPT is only a small part of a much bigger whole.
What is artificial intelligence, anyway?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term for many different technologies. Whenever a computer system can carry out tasks that would normally require human abilities, we talk about AI.
That includes things like recognising speech, analysing images, translating text or finding patterns in large amounts of data.
Navigation systems, Netflix recommendations, Spotify suggestions, spam filters, automatic translations and modern phone cameras all already use AI today.
So many families have been using artificial intelligence for years without being aware of it. ChatGPT therefore isn’t the AI – it’s simply one of many applications built on AI.
So what exactly is ChatGPT?
Let’s stay with the car example. When you drive, you sit behind the steering wheel. You work the pedals, look at the displays and steer the vehicle. The actual engine, though, sits under the bonnet. Normally you never see it at all.
It’s similar with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is the interface you talk to. That’s where you type questions, upload files or hold conversations. So ChatGPT isn’t the actual AI, but the application that gives you access to the AI.
ChatGPT is the cockpit. The real work happens in the engine bay.
But what’s in there?
The engine behind ChatGPT
Working in the background is what’s known as a language model.
Language models belong to a particular group of AI systems and have been trained to analyse human language and generate new text.
When you ask ChatGPT a question, it’s this language model that calculates the answer.
In other words: ChatGPT is the application – the language model produces the content. Without a language model, ChatGPT would be nothing but an empty input box.
At present, different providers use different language models. OpenAI relies on GPT models, Google on Gemini and Anthropic on Claude.
The applications look different, but the basic principle stays much the same: a language model works in the background and produces the actual answers.
Why does ChatGPT seem so intelligent?
This is where the next misunderstanding often arises.
Because the answers often sound natural, friendly and competent, many people believe the AI genuinely understands what it’s talking about. But that isn’t how it works.
The language model analyses enormous quantities of text and identifies patterns in it. Based on those patterns, it calculates which words very probably fit together.
So it doesn’t really know what’s right or wrong; rather, it tries to predict which answer fits best statistically.
The result often feels remarkably human, yet the AI has no experiences of its own, no feelings and no real understanding. That’s precisely why it can sometimes deliver brilliant answers and make astonishing mistakes at the same time.
We’ll look more closely at why that happens in the next few articles.
Why parents should know this difference
Our children are growing up with AI the way we grew up with the internet. The question is no longer whether children will use AI. Many already do.
The real question is:
How do children learn to use AI sensibly and critically?
Parents don’t need to become experts for that. Understanding the most important basics is enough.
If you know that ChatGPT is just an application and that language models are working in the background, you can make far better sense of many discussions about AI. It also becomes easier to judge the opportunities and risks realistically.
And that’s exactly what this Famalyzer blog series is here to help with.
The key points in brief
- AI is a broad field of technology covering many different applications.
- ChatGPT isn’t “the AI”, it’s an application.
- A language model works in the background and produces the answers.
- Language models seem intelligent but have no real understanding.
- Children often already use AI more than their parents understand it.
- If you know the basics, you can support your children better.
What’s next?
Now that you know what distinguishes AI, ChatGPT and language models, the next intriguing question follows:
How does an AI actually learn?
Does it learn from experience, like a child? Or does it work in a completely different way?
That’s exactly what the next post is about.