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Comment by epihelix

> This presumes an LLM has something to say. The reason the text doesnt make much sense, is because it doesnt. It isnt "on topic" because it has no topic to be on. Sentences go on, are joined irrelevantly, and so on because theyre sampled from a distribution of "possibly relevant sentences". They aren't being addressed to a reader (whose mind is being modelled), on a topic the writer wishes to express.

While I don't like LLM voice either, I'd strongly disagree with this. LLM writing can be very tight these days -- sentences do not "go on" and are not "joined irrelevantly". I'm not sure when you last used an LLM, but it must have been a very long time ago; this hasn't been the case since late 2024 for frontier models, in my experience.

Obviously there's no underlying consciousness behind it all, but the verisimilitude is good enough for stimulating conversations on the recent research literature in my field, which I appreciate. For me, at least, the communication level is absolutely fine.

(YMMV, of course, and perhaps my bar for this is lower than yours.)

parent epihelix 1 day ago

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