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.)
> 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 why are you so eager to defend your fantastical scenario? It doesn’t matter how considerate you are, truth is the overwhelming majority of people aren’t and won’t be. We’re discussing reality here, not “what could be if we lived in a utopia which will never come to pass”.
The optimistic case is "having 500 bits, giving LLM 300, getting back 1000, and learning extra 500 in the process". Real numbers are lower. People don't vouch thoroughly and don't catch all mistakes.
But reasonable people don't send every output from LLMs to others without giving it a cursory glance (obvious hallucinations or nonsense would paint the sender as incompetent or inconsiderate), and that alone eliminates the worst levels of noise. A cursory read and cutting out obvious bullshit before sending is enough to make the message carry more bits of information than the propmpt.
> the overwhelming majority of people aren’t and won’t be.
In my experience, the "overwhelming majority" are giving something between a cursory glance and cursory edit; whether the resulting message has more or less information than prompt then depends on how much noise LLM added on top. The inconsiderate people I deal with, they often send "net more bits than in prompt" outputs, but those outputs are also verbose and not fully filtered for bullshit, thus it's effortful to tease out the signal from noise.
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.)
latexr · · focus · HN ↗
> This is the optimistic scenario
So is it typical or optimistic?
> 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 why are you so eager to defend your fantastical scenario? It doesn’t matter how considerate you are, truth is the overwhelming majority of people aren’t and won’t be. We’re discussing reality here, not “what could be if we lived in a utopia which will never come to pass”.
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
The optimistic case is "having 500 bits, giving LLM 300, getting back 1000, and learning extra 500 in the process". Real numbers are lower. People don't vouch thoroughly and don't catch all mistakes.
But reasonable people don't send every output from LLMs to others without giving it a cursory glance (obvious hallucinations or nonsense would paint the sender as incompetent or inconsiderate), and that alone eliminates the worst levels of noise. A cursory read and cutting out obvious bullshit before sending is enough to make the message carry more bits of information than the propmpt.
> the overwhelming majority of people aren’t and won’t be.
In my experience, the "overwhelming majority" are giving something between a cursory glance and cursory edit; whether the resulting message has more or less information than prompt then depends on how much noise LLM added on top. The inconsiderate people I deal with, they often send "net more bits than in prompt" outputs, but those outputs are also verbose and not fully filtered for bullshit, thus it's effortful to tease out the signal from noise.