You can view LLMs as a lemon to squeeze.
You can view LLMs as a lemon to squeeze. The quality of an LLM's juice is tied to who is doing the squeezing. An implication of all outputs from LLMs being co-created ...
Topic: llms
1,749 mentions · 790 chunks · 131 episodes
184.9× distinctiveness vs baseline
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How much more common this term is here than in ordinary English. Higher values mean the topic is more characteristic of this corpus.
1.5x burst in 2025 Q1
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Peak quarter intensity across the topic's active span. Higher values mean attention was concentrated into a shorter stretch rather than spread evenly over time.
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- llms appears in 790 chunks across 131 episodes, from 2023-11-06 to 2026-08-03.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 10/20/25 (2025-10-20), with 17 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with ChatGPT, Claude, and Google, while by chunk count it sits between Claude; its yearly rank moved from #2 in 2023 to #1 in 2026.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
A model being trained on data or using RAG at inference time has wildly different characteristics.
...ference time has wildly different characteristics. But a lot of discourse about LLMs doesn't differentiate the two. I see even technical people muddle this all the time. There's a difference between an LLM in training absorbing a holo...
Last week I compared LLM providers to electricity providers.
...viders to electricity providers. Capital intensive, but commodity. But actually LLMs are a worse business than electricity providers[ako]. Electricity providers typically have a geographic monopoly; end consumers only have one option ...
Someone got an LLM to create a pretty good stand-up routine for other LLMs.
Someone got an LLM to create a pretty good stand-up routine for other LLMs. My first reaction was: wow, the LLM is pretty funny! But I realize that that's partially an illusion. The LLM, working in tandem with the human, is ...
The append-only conversation log to interact with LLMs leaves me wanting more.
The append-only conversation log to interact with LLMs leaves me wanting more. In the past few months I've had a number of revelatory, multi-hour conversations with LLMs where I explore and pull on thread...
Interacting with LLMs today is like doing computing before the GUI.
Interacting with LLMs today is like doing computing before the GUI.[ami] Clear raw potential that it takes specialist skills to unlock and apply. The command line was a re...
A nice little use for LLMs: discovering best practices.
A nice little use for LLMs: discovering best practices. For example, download three different popular templates for Project Management from Notion, and provide them to the LLM,...
LLMs are unlike normal programs in that they allow open-ended output.
LLMs are unlike normal programs in that they allow open-ended output. Normal programs are close-ended[amm]: given similar inputs they will behave similarl...
An insightful quote from Ilya Sutskever via an old Less Wrong post about why LLMs are so powerful: "to learn to predict text, is to learn to predict the causal processes of which the text is a shadow,"
An insightful quote from Ilya Sutskever via an old Less Wrong post about why LLMs are so powerful: "to learn to predict text, is to learn to predict the causal processes of which the text is a shadow,"[amo]
LLMs are the input to the next big thing.
LLMs are the input to the next big thing.[amq] LLMs are like electricity[ams]: a general technology that reconfigures the costs of key inputs, making wild...
My friend Anthea pointed out that my assertion that LLMs capture "all of society" is wrong.
My friend Anthea pointed out that my assertion that LLMs capture "all of society" is wrong. LLMs give a slice of the content represented on the internet, which has a strong western, English bias. She imagin...
Tons of new species are created when a disruptive thing happens.
...gy it might mean a new disruptive technology, like electricity, jet engines, or LLMs. The new disruptive technology reconfigures the "fitness landscape" of viable ideas, by radically changing a key dimension of cost. With all of the n...
Last week I framed LLMs as dowsing rods.
Last week I framed LLMs as dowsing rods. The more I think about it, the more I like that frame. A dowsing rod is a fuzzy kind of imprecise 'magic' that you should hold light...
When extracting information from LLMs, we're like cavemen poking them in the dark.
When extracting information from LLMs, we're like cavemen poking them in the dark. LLMs encode vastly more information than we know how to retrieve. We're in the very early stages of figu...
An interesting use case for LLMs: on-demand cozy schlock novels.
An interesting use case for LLMs: on-demand cozy schlock novels. For example, fan fiction or formulaic romance novels. These novels already aren't great literature, they're formulaic...
Collapsing intuition to formal rules is an expensive, combinatorial process.
...uman in the loop, but humans are expensive and get bored.[anu][anv] Now we have LLMs to do some of the squishy, high-context things that can float around the problem domain. But that means that if you've iterated to find something you...
A few things I liked reading this week.
...eading this week. Amelia Wattenberger's LLM fish eyes. It does track to me that LLMs will be an ingredient that allows new kinds of UX to become possible that wasn't possible before. The ability to generate high-quality summaries of p...
LLMs are best used as a thought partner, not as an oracle.
LLMs are best used as a thought partner, not as an oracle. They will often be wrong; you should assume anything they tell you is likely to be approximatel...
I like magic as a frame for things that are powered by LLMs.
I like magic as a frame for things that are powered by LLMs. Normal programming is mechanistic. It does exactly what it was told to do, even if that's not exactly what the creator meant. But LLM-powered experi...
LLMs are like chainsaws, allowing you to hack and slash through dense problems.
LLMs are like chainsaws, allowing you to hack and slash through dense problems. Before those problems might have been dense, foreboding jungles, with no g...