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Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:35.737708+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:35.273898+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [ { "cmd": [ "(internal) archivebox.extractors.htmltotext", "./{singlefile,dom}.html" ], "cmd_version": "0.8.5rc51", "end_ts": "2025-08-06T14:40:03.307092+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Laurence Tratt: LLM Inflation (/laurie/blog/blog.css) (/laurie/) Home > (/laurie/blog/) Blog \u2261 (/laurie/) Home (/laurie/blog/) > Blog (mailto:laurie@tratt.net) email (https://bsky.app/profile/ltratt.bsky.social) Bluesky (https://mastodon.social/@ltratt) Mastodon (https://twitter.com/laurencetratt) Twitter (https://bsky.app/profile/ltratt.bsky.social) Bluesky (https://twitter.com/laurencetratt) Twitter LLM Inflation RSS feed: (/laurie/news.rss) whole site or (/laurie/blog/blog.rss) just the blog Recent posts (/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html) LLM Inflation (/laurie/blog/2025/comparing_the_glove80_and_maltron_keyboards.html) Comparing the Glove80 and Maltron keyboards (/laurie/blog/2025/the_llm_for_software_yoyo.html) The LLM-for-software Yo-yo (/laurie/blog/2025/the_fifth_kind_of_optimisation.html) The Fifth Kind of Optimisation (/laurie/blog/2025/better_shell_history_search.html) Better Shell History Search (/laurie/blog/2024/can_we_retain_the_benefits_of_transitive_dependencies_without_undermining_security.html) Can We Retain the Benefits of Transitive Dependencies Without Undermining Security? (/laurie/blog/2024/structured_editing_and_incremental_parsing.html) Structured Editing and Incremental Parsing (/laurie/blog/2024/how_i_prepare_to_make_a_video_on_programming.html) How I Prepare to Make a Video on Programming (/laurie/blog/2024/pizauth_https_redirects.html) pizauth: HTTPS redirects (/laurie/blog/2024/recording_and_processing_spoken_word.html) Recording and Processing Spoken Word (/laurie/blog/archive.html) Blog archive One of the signal achievements of computing is data compression 1 : we take in data, make it smaller while retaining all information (\u201clossless\u201d compression), transmit it, and then decompress it back to the original at the\nother end. For many years, compression was an absolute requirement to get things done:\nstorage devices were too small for the data we wanted to store and networks too\nslow to transmit what we wanted at an acceptable speed. Today compression is less often an absolute requirement but it can still make\nour lives usefully better. For example, the page you\u2019re reading right now has,\nalmost certainly, arrived to you in a (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_compression) compressed\nform . It was worth my time\nmaking this work, because my site now displays more quickly on your screen and\nthe load on my server is reduced. All of which makes me greatly amused to see that in 2025 we are now sometimes\ndoing the very opposite. Here\u2019s a simple example. Bob needs a new computer for his job. In order to\nobtain a new work computer he has to create a 4 paragraph business case\nexplaining why the new computer will improve his productivity. Creating the\nnecessary prose is torturous for most of us, so Bob fires up the LLM du jour,\ntypes in \u201cPlease create a 4 paragraph long business case for my manager,\nexplaining why I need to replace my old, slow computer\u201d and copies the result\ninto his email. Bob\u2019s manager receives 4 paragraphs of dense prose and realises from the first line\nthat he\u2019s going to have to read the whole thing carefully to work out what he\u2019s\nbeing asked for and why. Instead, he copies the email into the LLM du jour and\ntypes at the start \u201cPlease summarise this email for me in one sentence\u201d. The 4\nparagraphs are summarised as \u201cThe sender needs a new computer as his current one is\nold and slow and makes him unproductive.\u201d The manager approves the request. I have started to refer to this pattern \u2013 which I\u2019ve now seen happen several\ntimes in very different contexts \u2013 as LLM inflation . It is very easy to use\nLLMs to turn short, simple content into something long and seemingly profound \u2014 and to\nuse LLMs to turn long and seemingly profound content into something short and simple. That we are using LLMs for inflation should not be taken as a criticism of\nthese wonderful tools. It might, however, make us consider why we find\nourselves inflating content. At best we\u2019re implicitly rewarding obfuscation\nand time wasting; at worst we\u2019re allowing a lack of clear thinking\nto be covered up. I think we\u2019ve all known this to be true, but LLMs allow us to\nsee the full extent of this with our own eyes. Perhaps it will encourage us to\nchange! 2025-08-06 10:50 (/laurie/blog/2025/comparing_the_glove80_and_maltron_keyboards.html) Older If you\u2019d like updates on new blog posts: follow me on (https://mastodon.social/@ltratt) Mastodon or (https://twitter.com/laurencetratt) Twitter ;\nor (../blog.rss) subscribe to the RSS feed ;\nor (/laurie/newsletter/) subscribe to email updates : (email@example.com) (Subscribe) Failed to subscribe: please load page and try again Sending... Footnotes 1 And, of course, information theory, but I\u2019m more\nconcerned with the practical effects in this post. \u2612 And, of course, information theory, but I\u2019m more\nconcerned with the practical effects in this post. Comments (Comment text (markdown/commondown supported)...) (Name) (Homepage (e.g. https://example.com/)) (optional) (email (e.g.email@example.com)) (used only to verify your comment: it is not displayed) Notify me of further comments (Comment) (Preview) Failed to submit comment: please load page and try again Submitting... (/laurie/) Home > (/laurie/blog/) Blog \u2261 (/laurie/) Home (/laurie/blog/) > Blog (mailto:laurie@tratt.net) email (https://bsky.app/profile/ltratt.bsky.social) Bluesky (https://mastodon.social/@ltratt) Mastodon (https://twitter.com/laurencetratt) Twitter (https://bsky.app/profile/ltratt.bsky.social) Bluesky (https://twitter.com/laurencetratt) Twitter " ], "output": "htmltotext.txt", "pwd": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-06T14:40:03.240399+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "media": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/local/bin/yt-dlp", "--restrict-filenames", "--trim-filenames", "128", "--write-description", "--write-info-json", "--write-annotations", "--write-thumbnail", "--no-call-home", "--write-sub", "--write-auto-subs", "--convert-subs=srt", "--yes-playlist", "--continue", "--no-abort-on-error", "--ignore-errors", "--geo-bypass", "--add-metadata", "--format=(bv*+ba/b)[filesize<=750m][filesize_approx<=?750m]/(bv*+ba/b)", "--skip-download", "--cache-dir=/data/yt-dlp-cache/", "--cookies=/data/yt-dlp-cache/cookies.txt", "--proxy=socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--no-playlist", "https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html" ], "cmd_version": "2024.10.7", "end_ts": "2025-08-06T14:40:16.779371+00:00", "index_texts": [], "output": "media/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-06T14:40:07.565443+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/postlight-parser", "https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html" ], "cmd_version": "2.2.3", "end_ts": "2025-08-06T14:40:03.160308+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:57.842536+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/home/archivebox/.npm/bin/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpvylu_nyl", "https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:48.701686+00:00", "index_texts": [ "LLM Inflation\n\n\n \n\n\n\nRecent posts\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBlog archive\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOne of the signal achievements of computing is data compression1: we take in data, make it smaller while retaining all\ninformation (\u201clossless\u201d compression), transmit it, and then decompress it back to the original at the\nother end.\nFor many years, compression was an absolute requirement to get things done:\nstorage devices were too small for the data we wanted to store and networks too\nslow to transmit what we wanted at an acceptable speed.\nToday compression is less often an absolute requirement but it can still make\nour lives usefully better. For example, the page you\u2019re reading right now has,\nalmost certainly, arrived to you in a compressed\nform. It was worth my time\nmaking this work, because my site now displays more quickly on your screen and\nthe load on my server is reduced.\nAll of which makes me greatly amused to see that in 2025 we are now sometimes\ndoing the very opposite.\nHere\u2019s a simple example. Bob needs a new computer for his job. In order to\nobtain a new work computer he has to create a 4 paragraph business case\nexplaining why the new computer will improve his productivity. Creating the\nnecessary prose is torturous for most of us, so Bob fires up the LLM du jour,\ntypes in \u201cPlease create a 4 paragraph long business case for my manager,\nexplaining why I need to replace my old, slow computer\u201d and copies the result\ninto his email.\nBob\u2019s manager receives 4 paragraphs of dense prose and realises from the first line\nthat he\u2019s going to have to read the whole thing carefully to work out what he\u2019s\nbeing asked for and why. Instead, he copies the email into the LLM du jour and\ntypes at the start \u201cPlease summarise this email for me in one sentence\u201d. The 4\nparagraphs are summarised as \u201cThe sender needs a new computer as his current one is\nold and slow and makes him unproductive.\u201d The manager approves the request.\nI have started to refer to this pattern \u2013 which I\u2019ve now seen happen several\ntimes in very different contexts \u2013 as LLM inflation. It is very easy to use\nLLMs to turn short, simple content into something long and seemingly profound \u2014 and to\nuse LLMs to turn long and seemingly profound content into something short and simple.\nThat we are using LLMs for inflation should not be taken as a criticism of\nthese wonderful tools. It might, however, make us consider why we find\nourselves inflating content. At best we\u2019re implicitly rewarding obfuscation\nand time wasting; at worst we\u2019re allowing a lack of clear thinking\nto be covered up. I think we\u2019ve all known this to be true, but LLMs allow us to\nsee the full extent of this with our own eyes. Perhaps it will encourage us to\nchange!\n\n\n\n\n2025-08-06 10:50\n\nOlder\n\n\n\n\nIf you\u2019d like updates on new blog posts: follow me on\nMastodon\nor Twitter;\nor subscribe to the RSS feed;\nor subscribe to email updates:\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFootnotes\n\n\n\n\nComments" ], "output": "readability/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:46.498919+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--proxy", "socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--max-time", "60", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:45.732459+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Laurence Tratt: LLM Inflation", "pwd": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2025-08-06T14:39:45.717622+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": "ArchiveError: Failed to find \"content-location\" URL header in Archive.org response.", "dom": "output.html", "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": "media/", "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Laurence Tratt: LLM Inflation", "warc": null, "wget": null }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1754491164.546426", "newest_archive_date": "2025-08-06T14:40:16.881646+00:00", "num_failures": 1, "num_outputs": 8, "oldest_archive_date": "2025-08-06T14:39:31.913790+00:00", "path": "/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_abid": "snp_01K1ZX55XQFCE36E0701MMJV1N", "snapshot_id": "5f0cbe07-fc60-43cc-b925-8436a9496c35", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1754491162-import.txt" ], "tags": null, "tags_str": "", "timestamp": "1754491164.546426", "title": "Laurence Tratt: LLM Inflation", "url": "https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2025/llm_inflation.html" }