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LLM Inflation
One of the signal achievements of computing is data compression1: we take in data, make it smaller while retaining all information (“lossless” compression), transmit it, and then decompress it back to the original at the other end. For many years, compression was an absolute requirement to get things done: storage devices were too small for the data we wanted to store and networks too slow to transmit what we wanted at an acceptable speed.
It was worth my time making this work, because my site now displays more quickly on your screen and the load on my server is reduced. Bob’s manager receives 4 paragraphs of dense prose and realises from the first line that he’s going to have to read the whole thing carefully to work out what he’s being asked for and why. At best we’re implicitly rewarding obfuscation and time wasting; at worst we’re allowing a lack of clear thinking to be covered up.
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