I disagree with the author in a big way. '25's LLMs are designed to echo material already out there on the Internet if it exists because we value that more. If

I disagree with the author in a big way. '25's LLMs are designed to echo material already out there on the Internet if it exists because we value that more. If I want a summary of The Matrix, I prefer a summary that agrees with the zeitgeist, rather than a novel, unorthodox summary that requires a justification as to its deviation. In fact, the example provided by the author is a great illustration of this: > A philosophical exploration of free will and reality disguised as a sci-fi action film about breaking free from systems of control. The words here refer back to the notions "free will" that is prominent in Western discourse from St. Augustine through Descartes and thereafter and similarly of "sci-fi". These are notions an uneducated East-Asian with limited Internet use and pop culture fluency will simply not understand. They would in fact prefer the latter description. The author and this hypothetical East-Asian live in very different zeitgeists, and correspondingly experience the movie differently and value different summaries of the film. They each prefer a summary that agrees with the zeitgeist, rather than a novel, unorthodox summary (relative to their zeitgeist) that requires a justification as to its deviation. On the other hand, if you asked LLMs to explain material and concepts, one modality in which it does is use formulaic, novel, and unorthodox analogies to explain it to you. By formulaic and novel, I mean that the objects and scenarios in the analogies are frequently of a certain signature kind that it has been trained with, but it is novel in that the analogies are not found in the wild on the internet. If you have frequently used LLMs for the purpose of explaining concepts, you will have encountered these analogies and know what I mean by this. The analogies are frequently not too accurate, but they round out the response by giving an ELI5-style answer. Ironically, the author may have succumbed to LLM sycophancy.