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An LLM is a lossy encyclopedia

(simonwillison.net)
509 points tosh | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.224s | source

(the referenced HN thread starts at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45060519)
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latexr ◴[] No.45101170[source]
A lossy encyclopaedia should be missing information and be obvious about it, not making it up without your knowledge and changing the answer every time.

When you have a lossy piece of media, such as a compressed sound or image file, you can always see the resemblance to the original and note the degradation as it happens. You never have a clear JPEG of a lamp, compress it, and get a clear image of the Milky Way, then reopen the image and get a clear image of a pile of dirt.

Furthermore, an encyclopaedia is something you can reference and learn from without a goal, it allows you to peruse information you have no concept of. Not so with LLMs, which you have to query to get an answer.

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energy123 ◴[] No.45101510[source]
An encyclopaedia also can't win a gold medals at the IMO and IOI. So yeah, they're not the same thing, even though the analogy is pretty good.
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1. latexr ◴[] No.45101679[source]
Of course they’re not the same thing, the goal of an analogy is not to be perfect but to provide a point of comparison to explain an idea.

My point is that I find the chosen term inadequate. The author made it up from combining two existing words, where one of them is a poor fit for what they’re aiming to convey.