flâneur

Reading and writing in the age of language models

bitsofwonder.substack.com · 850 words · saved by 1 readers

Socrates would be delighted about the rise of large language models (LLMs). He was the one who was opposed to books because the best way to learn something, in his view, was to have direct communication with the teacher. We have that now: we can learn anything by means of a back and forth conversation with a dynamic and intelligent model, rather than a static piece of text. This completely changes the game for infovores: you now have an advanced tutor on almost any subject you can think of,1 and this tutor is available at any hour of the day and will never get tired of answering your questions. If the quest for knowledge was like fishing, then books are the equivalent of giant nets: you get a lot of good stuff with them, but they capture too much. It’s very time-consuming to scrounge through your catch to find the specific piece of knowledge you’re looking for. Language models are a fishing rod with hyperoptimized genetically-engineered bait, precisely shaped for the exact kind of fish

Socrates would be delighted about the rise of large language models (LLMs). He was the one who was opposed to books because the best way to learn something, in his view, was to have direct communication with the teacher. We have that now: we can learn anything by means of a back and forth conversation with a dynamic and intelligent model, rather than a static piece of text. This completely changes the game for infovores: you now have an advanced tutor on almost any subject you can think of,1 and this tutor is available at any hour of the day and will never get tired of answering your…

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