Nick Perry traces what happens when you send an AI prompt: your words convert to binary, travel through routers and fiber-optic cables as light pulses across continents in 40-80 milliseconds, hit data-center chips that generate a response, and return almost instantly.
Do you know what actually happens when you send an AI prompt? Because it's way crazier than you'd ever guess. Like, the instant you click send, your words get turned into ones and zeros and fired out of your router down the fiber line to your internet provider. Then a split second later, they reach a data center. And if it's on another continent, your words get turned into pulses of light which are shot through cables on the ocean floor. Then 40 to 80 milliseconds later, your prompt crosses an entire ocean and lands thousands of miles away in a rack of AI chips. Those chips feed your prompt to the models, so they start to think about how to complete your prompt. And once each piece is ready, it gets fired straight back to you across that same path, back to your chat, all before you can blink, from just one tap of a button.
