alt Hacker NewsAside: Does anyone actually use summarization features? I've never once been tempted to "summarize" because when I read something I either want to read the entire thing, or look for something specific. Things I want summarized, like academic papers, already have an abstract or a synopsis.
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Yeah, basically every 15 minute YouTube video, because the amount of actual content I care about is usually 1-2 sentences, and usually ends up being the first sentence of an LLM summary of the transcript.
If something has actual substance I'll watch the whole thing, but that's maybe 10% of videos I find in experience.
No, because an LLM cannot summarise. It can only shorten which is not the same.
Citation: https://ea.rna.nl/2024/05/27/when-chatgpt-summarises-it-actu...
You mean you don't summarize those terrible articles you happen to come across and you're a little intrigued, hoping that there's some substance, and then you read, and it just repeats the same thing over and over again with different wording? Anyway, I sometimes still give them the benefit of the doubt, and end up doing a summary. Often they get summarized into 1 or 2 sentences.
Yes, several times a day. I use summarization for webpages, messages, documents and YouTube videos. It’s super handy.
I mainly use a custom prompt using ChatGPT via the Raycast app and the Raycast browser extension.
That said, I don’t feel comfortable with the level of AI being shoved into browsers by their vendors.
I occasionally use the "summarize" button on the iPhone Mobile Safari reader view if I land on a blog entry and it's quite long and I want to get a quick idea of if it's worth reading the whole thing or not.
Yes. I use it sometimes in Firefox with my local LLM server. Sometimes i come across an article I'm curious about but don't have the time or energy to read. Then I get a TL;DR from it. I know it's not perfect but the alternative is not reading it at all.
If it does interest me then I can explore it. I guess I do this once a week or so, not a lot.
Haven’t tried them but I can see these features being really useful for screen reader users.
Yes.
Most recently, a new ISP contract: because it's both low stakes enough where I don't care much about inaccuracies (it's a bog standard contract from a run of the mill ISP), there's basically no information in there that the cloud vendor doesn't already have (if they have my billing details) but also where I'm curious about whether anything might jump out, all while not really wanting to read the 5 pages of the thing.
Just went back to that, it got both all of the main items (pricing, contract terms, my details) correctly, but also the annoying fine print (that I referenced, just in case). Also works pretty well across languages, though that depends on the model in question a bunch.
I feel like if browsers or whatever get the UX of this down, people will upload all sorts of data into those vendors that they normally shouldn't. I also think that with nuanced enough data, we'll eventually have the LLM equivalent of Excel messing up data due to some formatting BS.
Nah, because anything not worth reading is also not worth summarizing.
No, because I know how to search and skim.
In-browser ones? No. With external LLMS? Often. It depends on the purpose of the text.
If the purpose is to read someone's _writing_, then I'm going to read it, for the sheer joy of consuming the language. Nothing will take that from me.
If the purpose is to get some critical piece of information I need quickly, then no, I'd rather ask an AI questions about a long document than read the entire thing. Documentation, long email threads, etc. all lend themselves nicely to the size of a context window.