Humans decide from a few bytes of compressed data — and AI models do the same
yunta_tsai · x · 2026-10-06
The author draws a parallel: humans routinely decide from a few bytes — a number, a bar, a pie chart — compressing petabytes of raw information. Policy is only as good as what the compression kept; most people skim summaries instead of checking sources.
Models make the same move with a different standard: having seen the full distribution, their discard is learned rather than improvised. They compress, keep what the loss says matters, and apply policy to that representation instead of a glanced-at chart.
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