Re:The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble
by UltraLutra on Wednesday July 23, 2025 @02:21PM
(#44662329)
It’s not bad for summarizing or translating.
I like categorize AI outputs by prompt + context input information size vs output information size.
Summaries: output < input. It’s pretty good at this for most low-to-medium stakes tasks.
Translate: output ≈ input but in different format/language. It’s decent at this, but requires more checking.
Generative expansion: output > input. This is where the danger is. Like asking for a cheeseburger and it infers a sesame seed bun because that matches its model of a cheeseburger. Generally that’s fine. Unless you’re deathly allergic to sesame seeds. Then it’s a big problem. So you have to be careful in these cases. And, at best, the anything inferred beyond the input is average by definition. Hence AI slop.
I like categorize AI outputs by prompt + context input information size vs output information size.
Summaries: output < input. It’s pretty good at this for most low-to-medium stakes tasks.
Translate: output ≈ input but in different format/language. It’s decent at this, but requires more checking.
Generative expansion: output > input. This is where the danger is. Like asking for a cheeseburger and it infers a sesame seed bun because that matches its model of a cheeseburger. Generally that’s fine. Unless you’re deathly allergic to sesame seeds. Then it’s a big problem. So you have to be careful in these cases. And, at best, the anything inferred beyond the input is average by definition. Hence AI slop.