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This experiment needs to be put in perspective. Let me explain. IF you did this SAME experiment with a human and had a human read an ENTIRE document and then re

This experiment needs to be put in perspective. Let me explain. IF you did this SAME experiment with a human and had a human read an ENTIRE document and then reproduce said document with edits. The DOCUMENT would DEGRADE even more. The way this experiment is conducted is not inline with how current agentic AI is used OR how even humans edit documents. Here's how agentic AI currently typically do edits: 1. They read the whole document. 2. They come up with a patch. A diff of the section they want to edit. 3. They change THAT section only. This is NOT what that experiment was doing. A 25% degradation rate would render the whole industry dead. No one would be using claude code because of that. The reality is... everyone is using claude code. AI is alien to the human brain, but in many ways it is remarkably. This is one aspect of similarity in that we cannot edit a whole document holistically to produce one edit. It has to be targeted surgical edits rather then a regurgitation of the entire document with said edit.

leptons 5mo ago
>IF you did this SAME experiment with a human and had a human read an ENTIRE document and then reproduce said document with edits. The DOCUMENT would DEGRADE even more. Except that isn't how humans edit documents, and it isn't how LLMs work either. When a human edits a document, they don't typically "reproduce said document with edits", which I assume you mean read the document and reproduce it from memory. They have the document, either physically printed out, or in a word processor. To make edits they either cross-out and write in the edit, or in a word processor just delete the text and replace it with something better. There's no need to keep the entire document in a human's memory for them to reproduce it from memory. The same goes for the LLM, it has access to the original document at all times. It can remove sections and replace them. But the LLM hallucinates. And if you give a document to a human high on LSD to edit, you might get some weird edits back.
- threethirtytwo 5mo ago
  >Except that isn't how humans edit documents, Bro. That's my point. >and it isn't how LLMs work either. This is also my point. To be more technical about it, the harness around the LLM pushes it to do surgical edits rather then regurgitation, so my point is this experiment is garbage and testing an impractical and rarely used use case. >When a human edits a document, they don't typically "reproduce said document with edits", which I assume you mean read the document and reproduce it from memory. No shit sherlock. The point of that sentence was to illustrate the absurdity of doing that which in turn illustrates the absurdity of this scientific paper. You're kind of lost.
hedora 5mo ago
Benjamin Franklin famously taught himself to write well by doing what you describe: Read a piece of a book, then rewrite it, then compare. At first his copies were badly degraded. Eventually, he was considered one of the best writers of his time. I feel like there's probably some way "the copy is better" could be quantified (at least to the point where it fools most of the people most of the time). If so, then expect LLMs to learn the same trick within a generation or two.
jrflowers 5mo ago
>IF you did this SAME experiment with a human and had a human read an ENTIRE document and then reproduce said document with edits. The DOCUMENT would DEGRADE even more. I like the idea that imagining somebody doing something in a way that nobody does it because it makes no sense for a person to do it like that is helpful here. It is like IF you made a human eat an ENTIRE IHOP™ Chicken Fajita Omelette in one bite they would CHOKE and the OMELETTE would go UNDIGESTED. It would get everywhere and the OMELETTE would be RUINED.
- threethirtytwo 5mo ago
  That's the point bro. I am saying this Experiment makes no sense. Humans don't do that. And Claude doesn't edit documents like that. Because it makes no sense. The point is saying that the Experiment itself is not helpful here.
  - jrflowers 5mo ago
    It is, in fact, pretty common for people to throw a document at a language model along with a “make it more gooder” prompt.
    - threethirtytwo 5mo ago
      That was true maybe 7 months ago. This is no longer the case. Harnesses use all kinds of tooling to edit things now.
      - rune-dev 5mo ago
        I think you’re living in a bubble if you think the average user of AI even knows what a harness is The vast majority of people are literally going to chatGPT, pasting in their document and asking for edits.
        threethirtytwo 5mo ago
        This will change too man. Maybe I am in a bubble but with how fast things are changing, it won’t be too long before the bubble becomes reality. Either way we should be doing experiments on the actual capabilities of AI not about the stupidest possible way to use AI because it helps validate your own negative bias against AI. Additionally as software engineers using agentic AI… which HN basically is… this experiment is not at all relevant in the context of where it is posted. We ALL use agentic ai and we all have the agent use surgical tools for editing. Don’t you find it strange that despite the fact we all do this, HN is full of rabid engineers gobbling this paper up as validation despite complete lack of relevance?

leptons 5mo ago

>IF you did this SAME experiment with a human and had a human read an ENTIRE document and then reproduce said document with edits. The DOCUMENT would DEGRADE even more. Except that isn't how humans edit documents, and it isn't how LLMs work either. When a human edits a document, they don't typically "reproduce said document with edits", which I assume you mean read the document and reproduce it from memory. They have the document, either physically printed out, or in a word processor. To make edits they either cross-out and write in the edit, or in a word processor just delete the text and replace it with something better. There's no need to keep the entire document in a human's memory for them to reproduce it from memory. The same goes for the LLM, it has access to the original document at all times. It can remove sections and replace them. But the LLM hallucinates. And if you give a document to a human high on LSD to edit, you might get some weird edits back.

threethirtytwo 5mo ago
>Except that isn't how humans edit documents, Bro. That's my point. >and it isn't how LLMs work either. This is also my point. To be more technical about it, the harness around the LLM pushes it to do surgical edits rather then regurgitation, so my point is this experiment is garbage and testing an impractical and rarely used use case. >When a human edits a document, they don't typically "reproduce said document with edits", which I assume you mean read the document and reproduce it from memory. No shit sherlock. The point of that sentence was to illustrate the absurdity of doing that which in turn illustrates the absurdity of this scientific paper. You're kind of lost.

hedora 5mo ago

Benjamin Franklin famously taught himself to write well by doing what you describe: Read a piece of a book, then rewrite it, then compare. At first his copies were badly degraded. Eventually, he was considered one of the best writers of his time. I feel like there's probably some way "the copy is better" could be quantified (at least to the point where it fools most of the people most of the time). If so, then expect LLMs to learn the same trick within a generation or two.

jrflowers 5mo ago

>IF you did this SAME experiment with a human and had a human read an ENTIRE document and then reproduce said document with edits. The DOCUMENT would DEGRADE even more. I like the idea that imagining somebody doing something in a way that nobody does it because it makes no sense for a person to do it like that is helpful here. It is like IF you made a human eat an ENTIRE IHOP™ Chicken Fajita Omelette in one bite they would CHOKE and the OMELETTE would go UNDIGESTED. It would get everywhere and the OMELETTE would be RUINED.

threethirtytwo 5mo ago
That's the point bro. I am saying this Experiment makes no sense. Humans don't do that. And Claude doesn't edit documents like that. Because it makes no sense. The point is saying that the Experiment itself is not helpful here.
- jrflowers 5mo ago
  It is, in fact, pretty common for people to throw a document at a language model along with a “make it more gooder” prompt.
  - threethirtytwo 5mo ago
    That was true maybe 7 months ago. This is no longer the case. Harnesses use all kinds of tooling to edit things now.
    - rune-dev 5mo ago
      I think you’re living in a bubble if you think the average user of AI even knows what a harness is The vast majority of people are literally going to chatGPT, pasting in their document and asking for edits.
      - threethirtytwo 5mo ago
        This will change too man. Maybe I am in a bubble but with how fast things are changing, it won’t be too long before the bubble becomes reality. Either way we should be doing experiments on the actual capabilities of AI not about the stupidest possible way to use AI because it helps validate your own negative bias against AI. Additionally as software engineers using agentic AI… which HN basically is… this experiment is not at all relevant in the context of where it is posted. We ALL use agentic ai and we all have the agent use surgical tools for editing. Don’t you find it strange that despite the fact we all do this, HN is full of rabid engineers gobbling this paper up as validation despite complete lack of relevance?