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LLM Inflation

tratt.net

Laurence Tratt: LLM Inflation

It's not a long article so I suggest reading it, but the basic summary is:

Historically a lot of tech works by compressing data, transferring/storing it, and then uncompressing data.

A lot of LLM use is the opposite, you use an LLM to take your simple statement and write it in a longer more formal format. The person reading it she's it's long and wordy, and uses an LLM to summarize it. Instead of compress-decompress, we're now inflating-deflating.

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LLM Inflation

3 comments
  • People do that to avoid the hassle of being misinterpreted. Transforming to the formal language is a kind of adapter pattern.

    • The specific example the article uses is a guy requesting a new work computer, so he uses an LLM to create a lengthy request that lists out all the reasons he needs a new one.

      It used to be that writing out a long request for something like that showed you were serious about it and willing to invest real time/effort into the request. A simple "I need a new computer because mine is old" type request would likely be dismissed. Using LLMs to write long requests for stuff like this is bypassing what was significant about the long-form request to begin with.

      • I mean, it's still not automated process. If you waste time to do that request probably means you need it.