"Two things seem true: people are having remarkable interactions with their LLMs, and no one wants to read them.... what would it take to make these conversations engaging to an outsider?"
I've been with this question as well. My null hypothesis is that this reduces to the craft of writing, which I want to frame now as having two levers:
1. the art of presenting just enough context, in the right sequence, with enough rhetorical lubricant, so that it carries the reader through
2. focusing in on the audience that already has enough of the same context that you can do less of the work of 1) and still succeed. (Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" was the first exposition of this for the post-Internet world I encountered)
LLM's are so compelling for the person prompting them, but only for that person, because they bring an incredible amount of power to bear on doing 1) just for them, which creates for that person the pleasurable experience of conversation being so easy, because they get to put much less effort into explaining themselves. We can look at norms of discourse in terms of how much work the speaker is expected to do, vs. the listener, and only in conversations with LLMs is it possible to expect the listener to most of the work.
Perhaps we could apply this power in real time for each reader? Experiment: present your conversation alongside a text box, where at any time the new reader can say, "I don't get this / help me understand", so that an LLM can re-present the content to them in a way that fits them.
Con: an LLM you're embedding and managing in the essay environment won't have the reader's personal context, so its answers might not be as good.
Pro: you would get to see the transcript and learn about how your work is being received. You could also then conceive of the work as not just the original text but all the exchanges around it, a co-production that evolves with each reader.
The conversation was really dense and I felt like I was missing a lot of context. It's what made me run out of momentum for reading it. If I imagine what would have been helpful for me in the vein above, it would be to see a list of the key concepts alongside the main text with short glosses on their meaning, so I could at least superficially follow along.
I think you’re on to something re: “applying the power” in realtime for the reader. Extending to a totally separate domain, let’s say a biochemist is having that thrilling, deep, accelerated exchange with their LLM, and I am a freshman in pre-med following along – the best case is probably the interface being mostly faithful to the conversation, even though it’s hard to follow, because some of the thrill does translate - but then I need plenty of affordances to “catch up” as a reader, affordances that themselves could be thrilling as I find myself able to follow along much faster than I thought possible. Something like that?
yeah, exactly, the LLM helps you build a staircase to span the gap between the original writer's understanding and your own, one conversational step at a time
"Two things seem true: people are having remarkable interactions with their LLMs, and no one wants to read them.... what would it take to make these conversations engaging to an outsider?"
I've been with this question as well. My null hypothesis is that this reduces to the craft of writing, which I want to frame now as having two levers:
1. the art of presenting just enough context, in the right sequence, with enough rhetorical lubricant, so that it carries the reader through
2. focusing in on the audience that already has enough of the same context that you can do less of the work of 1) and still succeed. (Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" was the first exposition of this for the post-Internet world I encountered)
LLM's are so compelling for the person prompting them, but only for that person, because they bring an incredible amount of power to bear on doing 1) just for them, which creates for that person the pleasurable experience of conversation being so easy, because they get to put much less effort into explaining themselves. We can look at norms of discourse in terms of how much work the speaker is expected to do, vs. the listener, and only in conversations with LLMs is it possible to expect the listener to most of the work.
Perhaps we could apply this power in real time for each reader? Experiment: present your conversation alongside a text box, where at any time the new reader can say, "I don't get this / help me understand", so that an LLM can re-present the content to them in a way that fits them.
Con: an LLM you're embedding and managing in the essay environment won't have the reader's personal context, so its answers might not be as good.
Pro: you would get to see the transcript and learn about how your work is being received. You could also then conceive of the work as not just the original text but all the exchanges around it, a co-production that evolves with each reader.
The conversation was really dense and I felt like I was missing a lot of context. It's what made me run out of momentum for reading it. If I imagine what would have been helpful for me in the vein above, it would be to see a list of the key concepts alongside the main text with short glosses on their meaning, so I could at least superficially follow along.
I think you’re on to something re: “applying the power” in realtime for the reader. Extending to a totally separate domain, let’s say a biochemist is having that thrilling, deep, accelerated exchange with their LLM, and I am a freshman in pre-med following along – the best case is probably the interface being mostly faithful to the conversation, even though it’s hard to follow, because some of the thrill does translate - but then I need plenty of affordances to “catch up” as a reader, affordances that themselves could be thrilling as I find myself able to follow along much faster than I thought possible. Something like that?
Really appreciate your comment!
yeah, exactly, the LLM helps you build a staircase to span the gap between the original writer's understanding and your own, one conversational step at a time