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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

Short answers to simple questions.

Accurate short answers / text are always harder than long answers, for human or AI. I know several authors and editors who write a lot longer at first, then spend a multiple of the initial time compressing it via a back and forth process to something dense. Sort of like weaving the initial threads.

I found this can work with AI. You get it to generate a lot more at first, and then do several passes over it to compress and squeeze out the noise while keeping the core information. With AI, at least with my prompts, it takes some effort (on my end) to get it to really really cut down the noise and not cut everything out.

If I had more time I'd write a shorter letter, a la Pascal.

Editing is generally hard work, at the current token price I don't mind spending multiple passes of high effort to get down to a reasonable noise/signal ratio. I've seen some people pass off output to a weaker/cheaper model but that makes me a bit nervous when I don't have intimate knowledge of the subject.

Sometimes it's not hard. "What color is the tongue of a giraffe?" can be answered in less than eight words trivially. Most models will give you paragraphs, bullet points, and followup questions.

True, I have seen that happen many times. When I want short answers, I always clarify that (e.g., give me short technical answer without pleasantries).

I'm often okay if the answer is longer but not hiding the real answer; a couple of paragraphs that I can skim the answer from instantly is okay. When it really buries it I have to follow up to express the format and type of answer I want.

I've had some success with adding something like "answer in no more than n words" to the prompt

this is my go-to as well using n of sentences, always trailing every session of work/response after whatever it wants to write. essentially a tldr and then I can review details if/when necessary.

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