Notes on "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web"

A Xerox photocopier used lossy compression (JBIG2) which led to subtle but significant errors.
It replaced the area labels of rooms (14.13, 21.11, 17.42 sq meters) with a single value (14.13 sq meters) due to perceived similarity.
The problem was the inaccuracies were not immediately obvious, making copies seem accurate when they weren't.

ChatGPT is like a "blurry JPEG" of the web, retaining information but not exact sequences.
It uses statistical regularities to compress text, similar to lossy compression.
"Hallucinations" (nonsensical answers) are compression artifacts, analogous to the Xerox copier's errors.
Interpolation: ChatGPT estimates missing information by looking at surrounding text, like averaging pixels in image compression.

Marcus Hutter's Prize for Compressing Human Knowledge aims to losslessly compress Wikipedia, believing better compression leads to AI.
Greatest compression is achieved by understanding the text and underlying principles (e.g., arithmetic, economics).
ChatGPT identifies statistical regularities (e.g., "supply is low" and "prices rise") but doesn't necessarily understand the underlying concepts.
GPT-3 struggles with arithmetic, especially with larger numbers, indicating a lack of genuine understanding.

Lossless compression would result in ChatGPT providing verbatim quotes, similar to a search engine.
Lossy compression makes ChatGPT seem smarter by rephrasing, creating an illusion of understanding.

Evaluating LLMs requires considering whether they've been trained on biased or inaccurate data.
Unacceptable blurriness: fabrication.

Generating web content with LLMs may lead to a blurrier web due to repackaging of existing information.
OpenAI might exclude ChatGPT-generated content from GPT-4 training data, indicating quality concerns.

Using LLMs might not be the best approach for original work.
The process of writing and rewriting, even unoriginal work, is crucial for developing original ideas and writing skills. A first draft is not simply a clear expression of idea but an original idea expressed poorly.