Compression is not prediction, it is recall. Can we make predictions based on compression? Absolutely. Is memory encoded into physical neurons technically compression? I would argue also yes.

However, going from compression to prediction is a large jump that is unsubstantiated by this article and based on the claim that probabilistic recall is also prediction.

Two perfect counterpoints to this are markets and weather patterns. One cannot predict future events based on past performance or behavior. Change is the only thing that's constant, and chaos/entropy is everywhere we look.

For simple problems like programming, sure predictive recall works amazingly well, but let's not pretend LLMs are actually predicting something. This is exactly why LLMs suck at doing anything novel; they lack imagination and creativity.