Fortune: “Here’s why you should think of it as a ‘glider’ to get better results, says engineer with Harvard PhD in neuroscience. ChatGPT has exploded in popularity, and people are using it to write articles and essays, generate marketing copy and computer code, or simply as a learning or research tool. However, most people don’t understand how it works or what it can do, so they are either not happy with its results or not using it in a way that can draw out its best capabilities. I’m a human factors engineer. A core principle in my field is never blame the user. Unfortunately, the ChatGPT search-box interface elicits the wrong mental model and leads users to believe that entering a simple question should lead to a comprehensive result, but that’s not how ChatGPT works. Unlike a search engine, with static and stored results, ChatGPT never copies, retrieves or looks up information from anywhere. Rather, it generates every word anew. You send it a prompt, and based on its machine-learning training on massive amounts of text, it creates an original answer. Most importantly, each chat retains context during a conversation, meaning that questions asked and answers provided earlier in the conversation will inform responses it generates later. The answers, therefore, are malleable, and the user needs to participate in an iterative process to shape them into something useful. Your mental model of a machine — how you conceive of it — is important for using it effectively. To understand how to shape a productive session with ChatGPT, think of it as a glider that takes you on journeys through knowledge and possibilities…”