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.
> 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.
Sure you can. LLM doesn't know what those 700 bits are, but you do. You may not realize it, and may not even know it at the time of prompting, but you do by the time you're sending.
Typical case is like this: you have 500 bits of semantic information to transfer. You give 300 of them to LLM, and get back the 500 bits you knew you have, and extra 500 you can quickly confirm are correct and relevant. Some of them are just dereferences of your input - where you recalled a pointer, but not what it pointed to. Some of it is information you never had before, but are able to easily validate.
You send that to me. I likely immediately realize the message was AI-assisted, but I trust you to be a decent human being, and not an asshole that lobs unverified LLM vomit over the fence for others to deal with. End result: you communicate 1000 bits of information to me, instead of planned 500, and you yourself learn extra 500 bits.
This is the optimistic scenario, but it does happen when LLM operator is not an asshole.
(Excuse the strong language, but I spent a lot of effort every day on both dealing with inconsiderate people lobbing LLM output at me, and making sure never to act like one myself, so it's a topic close to my heart.)
How often do you modify the LLM output before sending it? If it’s less than 50% of the time, it means that by not modifying it, you have added at most one bit of information to what you originally wrote. (If you don’t understand why, think of it this way: Instead of sending the LLM response, you could send the prompt and one extra bit indicating whether the LLM response to the prompt should be modified, followed by the modifications.)
> How often do you modify the LLM output before sending it?
Me specifically, I never send anyone LLM output I haven't give at least a quick read (not skim, read) to make sure it's reasonable and there is no obvious bullshit there. And then I still mention it's LLM-sourced.
> If it’s less than 50% of the time, it means that by not modifying it, you have added at most one bit of information to what you originally wrote. (...) Instead of sending the LLM response, you could send the prompt and one extra bit indicating whether the LLM response to the prompt should be modified, followed by the modifications.
It's not the case, though. Prompts are not interchangeable with output. There is no guarantee that if you send a prompt, and recipient passes it to their LLM, they'll receive anything similar to what you did. It may have mistakes - different mistakes - or just spend focus differently.
The extra bits I claim LLMs can add to the message hinge strictly on you vouching for the response. Of course, you can just prompt an LLM, learn from the response, and then write your message clean, containing both the bits you originally had, and the bits you gained. But at that point, the LLM already gave you text containing all those bits - if you can vouch for it, you may as well copy it over and save yourself the trouble.
> It's not the case, though. Prompts are not interchangeable with output. There is no guarantee that if you send a prompt, and recipient passes it to their LLM, they'll receive anything similar to what you did. It may have mistakes - different mistakes - or just spend focus differently.
I’m not saying that the response is interchangeable, but that due to the data processing inequality, it cannot convey strictly more information than the prompt.
> The extra bits I claim LLMs can add to the message hinge strictly on you vouching for the response.
My argument is that if you vouch at least 50% of the time, the vouching only adds one bit of useful information – either you vouch or not.
> due to the data processing inequality, it cannot convey strictly more information than the prompt.
Only in the case where the LLM message is not reviewed before sending, and only if we assume reliable LLM (so that the receiver could recreate the same output if given the original prompt). This is not a realistic scenario.
> My argument is that if you vouch at least 50% of the time, the vouching only adds one bit of useful information – either you vouch or not.
The alternative to vouching isn't "not vouching", but "correcting and cutting out wrong bits and vouching for the rest", which means the single "vouched for it" adds all the bits that are in final message but weren't there in the prompt.
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.
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Sure you can. LLM doesn't know what those 700 bits are, but you do. You may not realize it, and may not even know it at the time of prompting, but you do by the time you're sending.
Typical case is like this: you have 500 bits of semantic information to transfer. You give 300 of them to LLM, and get back the 500 bits you knew you have, and extra 500 you can quickly confirm are correct and relevant. Some of them are just dereferences of your input - where you recalled a pointer, but not what it pointed to. Some of it is information you never had before, but are able to easily validate.
You send that to me. I likely immediately realize the message was AI-assisted, but I trust you to be a decent human being, and not an asshole that lobs unverified LLM vomit over the fence for others to deal with. End result: you communicate 1000 bits of information to me, instead of planned 500, and you yourself learn extra 500 bits.
This is the optimistic scenario, but it does happen when LLM operator is not an asshole.
(Excuse the strong language, but I spent a lot of effort every day on both dealing with inconsiderate people lobbing LLM output at me, and making sure never to act like one myself, so it's a topic close to my heart.)
xigoi · · focus · HN ↗
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Me specifically, I never send anyone LLM output I haven't give at least a quick read (not skim, read) to make sure it's reasonable and there is no obvious bullshit there. And then I still mention it's LLM-sourced.
> If it’s less than 50% of the time, it means that by not modifying it, you have added at most one bit of information to what you originally wrote. (...) Instead of sending the LLM response, you could send the prompt and one extra bit indicating whether the LLM response to the prompt should be modified, followed by the modifications.
It's not the case, though. Prompts are not interchangeable with output. There is no guarantee that if you send a prompt, and recipient passes it to their LLM, they'll receive anything similar to what you did. It may have mistakes - different mistakes - or just spend focus differently.
The extra bits I claim LLMs can add to the message hinge strictly on you vouching for the response. Of course, you can just prompt an LLM, learn from the response, and then write your message clean, containing both the bits you originally had, and the bits you gained. But at that point, the LLM already gave you text containing all those bits - if you can vouch for it, you may as well copy it over and save yourself the trouble.
xigoi · · focus · HN ↗
I’m not saying that the response is interchangeable, but that due to the data processing inequality, it cannot convey strictly more information than the prompt.
> The extra bits I claim LLMs can add to the message hinge strictly on you vouching for the response.
My argument is that if you vouch at least 50% of the time, the vouching only adds one bit of useful information – either you vouch or not.
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Only in the case where the LLM message is not reviewed before sending, and only if we assume reliable LLM (so that the receiver could recreate the same output if given the original prompt). This is not a realistic scenario.
> My argument is that if you vouch at least 50% of the time, the vouching only adds one bit of useful information – either you vouch or not.
The alternative to vouching isn't "not vouching", but "correcting and cutting out wrong bits and vouching for the rest", which means the single "vouched for it" adds all the bits that are in final message but weren't there in the prompt.