Writing is fundamentally the transfer of information from your brain to my brain. If you have 1000 bits of semantic information you want to transfer, you can't give 300 bits of semantic information to an LLM and have it fill in the remaining 700, because it doesn't know what those 700 bits are. If it's able to guess those 700 bits correctly, then they aren't true semantic information, and you really only have 300 bits you want to transfer. You might as well transfer those bits to me directly, rather than having the LLM add on an extra superfluous 700 bits that I then have to filter out.
I agree. But there's still a valid use here for LLMs: If I have 1 Million bits of information and I want to communicate a synthesis of 500 bits to you, LLMs can be a viable helper. It is rarely done that way - I agree, but the way I use LLMs: Drop in all the relevant context information (PDFs, HTML, Markdown, Pictures etc. - up to usually 200-300k tokens), then compile a synthesis/summary prompt (usually 1-2 A4 pages of handwritten text. Then copy the output (1-2 A4 Pages), manually edit and send off (often, including an archive of the full original conversation, so the human on the other side can consult the unfiltered original prompt + inferencing, if wanted).
In other words: If I didn't reduce the 500 pages of text for you, you wouldn't know what I mean or what is relevant, or how to filter it yourself.
hatthew · · focus · HN ↗
Writing is fundamentally the transfer of information from your brain to my brain. If you have 1000 bits of semantic information you want to transfer, you can't give 300 bits of semantic information to an LLM and have it fill in the remaining 700, because it doesn't know what those 700 bits are. If it's able to guess those 700 bits correctly, then they aren't true semantic information, and you really only have 300 bits you want to transfer. You might as well transfer those bits to me directly, rather than having the LLM add on an extra superfluous 700 bits that I then have to filter out.
Helmut10001 · · focus · HN ↗
In other words: If I didn't reduce the 500 pages of text for you, you wouldn't know what I mean or what is relevant, or how to filter it yourself.