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Comment by hatthew | Hacker News Reader

I'm definitely being slightly too emphatic when I say it's "fundamentally the transfer of information", but I don't think that nuance is important.

When LLMs eventually get good at writing in the correct style for a given context, I'll admit that they have value in that way. But they aren't good at that yet. And even when they do get that good, I'll still dislike it for reasons that are more emotional than rational.

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I don't care how good the LLM gets. If I know some text was written by LLM I'd much rather know the prompt - the seed of intent.

If the seed of intent is "convey XYZ details so they know them" then I can choose to go and learn those details any way I see fit - maybe even ask an LLM to summarise some data for me! - rather than having to ingest whatever their LLM use poops out and trying to digest the intent and content and figure it out.

It is about empowerment, rather than eating shit.

When sharing summaries from calls that I attended but my team has not but I think they would find interesting and I simply don't have time to handcraft it myself I use LLM and attach my prompt and the transcript.

Attaching the prompt initially threw some people..."wait, your admitting to using AI..."..."err yea, unlike you with that PowerPoint you sent me last week". I sense this is the right way to go imho.

This is one of the weird things about LLM use. It is a handy tool.

If you have found a prompt that gives a good result, then by sharing it with me I now have a tool that gives a good result.

The problem is not the use of LLMs. It is the "passing it off as your own work".

You're focusing on the wrong thing.

Output is not interchangeable with the prompt. In many cases, the prompt does not have the information the sender wanted to give you, and there is no guarantee that your LLM will give those information - or do it correctly - if you use the prompt yourself.

The entire value of here is that sender read the output and is vouching for it. This is where "bits of information" come from. If the sender cannot be trusted to verify and vouch for the LLM text they're sending to you, well, they're an asshole and you should rebuke them or find someone more considerate of others to talk with. Them giving you their prompt doesn't help you with anything.

This is what's so amusing to me. People say they're not interested in the output of an LLM, only what a human has to say. But then when a human says "These words from the LLM are good, I vouch for them" the very same people say "If I wanted those words, I'd get them from the LLM myself, what's the point of this human at all?"

These humans are behaving worse than the LLMs at this point.

I am focusing on the thing that is usually hidden. You are correct that for a full picture I'd need the information the LLM operates on.

But my point is that the prompt is the nearest encapsulation of the intent of the originator. Give me the data and the prompt. Vouch for the output if you like, but I want the source.

> If I know some text was written by LLM I'd much rather know the prompt - the seed of intent.

Here's the proximal prompt "Okay, take everything we've been talking about for 2 hours and apply those edits to the the final draft for publication."

What exactly does that give you?

If you give me that. Then you've given me nothing. Give me the same transcript the LLM has access to instead.

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