Current AI systems excel at generating large amounts of text. You can give ChatGPT a few bullet points, and it will turn them into a paragraph, an email, an essay. So we’re all going to get a lot more text in the future.
AIs will soon force us to confront the fact that we live in a society where, for many situations, large amounts of text are required, expected, or interpreted in some way as being preferable to brevity. (On that subject, one of the nicest phrases I’ve heard in AI-related discussions recently is, “Why would I want to read something that somebody couldn’t be bothered to write?” )
Anyway, you generate this text from your bullet points, and then you send it to a colleague. But they’re swamped with the number of other people who are doing the same. So they use an AI to summarize your email back down to bullet points. This process of expanding and then contracting made me think of a heat pump, or a refrigerator. Except that in this case, the expansion phase produces a lot of hot air.
This also means there are two very fallible intermediaries inserted into your communication channel. The process reminded me of two stories from my childhood.
The first was in the late 70s, when I first saw (and loved) Star Wars. I always wondered, though, why C3PO always spoke to R2D2 in English, and R2D2 always responded in beeps, clicks and whistles. It was clear that he could understand English, and I realised even then that this was a much harder problem than generating it. Why, amidst all that technology, had nobody thought of fitting him with a small loudspeaker and a speech-synthesis chip? On the other hand, perhaps R2 was the smart one: was the English language really the best way for two machine intelligences to communicate?
The second story was a (possibly aprocryphal) one about an early computer-based system that could do English-Russian language translation; a very challenging task at the time. They gave it the phrase “Out of sight, out of mind” and asked it to turn it into Russian. They then took the output and told it to translate back into English. The result? “Invisible Idiot”.
Wouldn’t it be better if you just sent your bullet points to your colleague directly?
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Current AI tools like ChatGPT are great at expanding bullet points into full text, but this leads to an overload of verbose communication.
Society often values long-form writing, even when brevity might be more effective.
Ironically, people now use AI to summarize the same verbose texts back into bullet points.
This inflate–deflate cycle is compared to a heat pump that generates a lot of “hot air.”
Communication now includes two flawed intermediaries: AI generating and then summarizing text.
Anecdotes highlight that understanding language is harder than generating it, and that translation by machines can distort meaning.
The core suggestion: skip the fluff—just send the bullet points in the first place.
Courtesy ChatGPT 🙂
Yes indeed, or the following, also courtesy ChatGPT:
The Paradox of Text Generation in AI-Driven Workflows
Introduction
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence—particularly large language models—have revolutionized the way written communication is produced and consumed in professional environments. Tools such as ChatGPT have demonstrated the ability to generate extensive, articulate text from minimal input, including simple bullet points. While this enables faster and more accessible content creation, it also introduces new challenges in information overload and communication efficiency.
The Rise of Text as Currency
We are entering a phase where generating more text is not just possible—it is rapidly becoming the default. This shift is prompting a broader societal reflection: why is length so often valued over clarity or conciseness? In many industries, verbose documentation and elaborate narratives are considered more credible, thorough, or authoritative—whether or not they add substantial value.
One of the more poignant critiques emerging from AI-related conversations is the question: “Why would I want to read something that somebody couldn’t be bothered to write?” This sentiment reflects an implicit cultural expectation for detail—even if that detail is machine-generated.
Expansion and Contraction: A Futile Cycle
Consider a typical professional exchange: a user creates detailed narrative content from bullet points using AI and sends it to a colleague. That colleague, faced with a deluge of similarly generated messages, uses their own AI tool to condense the message back into bullet points. This sequence resembles a thermodynamic system: expansion followed by contraction—with the notable addition of metaphorical “hot air” during the elaboration phase.
This cycle creates an illusion of productivity while potentially eroding communication fidelity. It also introduces two AI-driven transformation layers between sender and receiver, each susceptible to misinterpretation and bias.
Lessons from Technology History
This challenge is reminiscent of two cautionary tales from the early days of digital communication:
The Star Wars Dilemma: In the original trilogy, C3PO—a humanoid robot—speaks English, while R2D2 communicates using beeps and whistles. The asymmetry highlights a critical point: understanding a language may be more difficult than generating it. Despite technological sophistication, the choice of English as a communication medium between machines seems inefficient. Perhaps R2D2’s minimalistic language was actually the more advanced option.
The “Invisible Idiot” Anecdote: An early experiment in machine translation involved translating the phrase “Out of sight, out of mind” into Russian and back into English. The result—“Invisible Idiot”—underscored the risks of semantic drift when intermediaries reinterpret content across systems. AI-generated communication may unknowingly replicate this pattern today.
Rethinking Communication Efficiency
Given the proliferation of AI tools, a more direct approach may be both more efficient and more authentic. If the core message can be conveyed in bullet points—why not share it in its original form? This approach reduces cognitive load, minimizes misinterpretation, and preserves clarity.
Oh, the bullet points did not render. Doh!
Ha ha! (courtesy me… ?)