The internet is awash with posts and articles about (and more worryingly BY) OpenAI’s new ChatGPT. It’s a huge but disconcerting leap forward in everyday AI. The threats are, indeed, real, but the science is for most of us very new.

This week, we ask what are robochats, AI, machine learning, algorithms and all those other scary terms? Hopefully, by understanding the tech we’ll be more prepared against the hijackers and phishing.

So here’s a short and superficial primer to put it all in context.