this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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I remember when compression was popularized, like mp3 and jpg, people would run experiments where they would convert lossy to lossy to lossy to lossy over and over and then share the final image, which was this overcooked nightmare
I wonder if a similar dynamic applies to the scenario presented in the comic with AI summarization and expansion of topics. Start with a few bullet points have it expand that to a paragraph or so, have it summarize it back down to bullet points, repeat 4-5 times, then see how far off you get from the original point.
In my experience, LLMs aren't really that good at summarizing
It's more like they can "rewrite more concisely" which is a bit different
If it isn't accurate to the source material, it isn't concise.
LLMs are good at reducing word count.
In case you haven't seen it, Tom7 created a delightful exploration of using an LLM to manipulate word counts.