0.3.2 What comes back
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- Panaversity ·
In everyday life. An airline keeps one record of your trip. From it, the airline prints your boarding pass, shows the same pass on your phone and emails you a receipt. Each copy is made for its next reader: the gate scanner, the security officer and your manager. When your seat changes, the airline changes the record and makes new copies. Nobody fixes a boarding pass with a pen.
What you will learn. Why you see headings and never the marks, and which shape to ask for. What you get when you copy a reply, and which file to change when a fact changes.
Why it matters. The reply you see is laid out for your eyes, in this chat. Its next reader may be a person, a spreadsheet or another AI. Each one needs its own shape. A copy made for its next reader can also leave out a line, or turn a remark into a rule. So you check each copy against the page it was made from.
The reply you see
Why do you see headings and never the marks?
Because the app turns them into a page. The model writes the marks, and the app turns them into headings, bullet points and bold before the reply reaches you. How many marks a reply uses depends on the model and its settings. One AI vendor tells one of its free models to answer simple questions in plain sentences. It also tells the model to use lists and formatting when they make a reply easier to read.1 You can always ask for more marks, or for fewer.
Is every reply text with marks?
No. Both AI vendors' apps2 can now build part of a reply as a chart, a diagram or buttons you can click.3 These pieces are built in the app. They are not a page of text that you can check line by line, or give to another AI. When you need to keep an answer, ask for it as a page: "as a markdown page, in one code block".
The shape for its next reader
Which shape should you ask for?
The shape its next reader needs. You choose the output format by who or what reads it next.
| Its next reader | Ask for | Because |
|---|---|---|
| An AI, or you later, to check it | a markdown page | it keeps its shape as plain text, in any app |
| A person who signs or files it | a document, in Word or PDF | it prints and files like any other document, and a PDF looks the same everywhere |
| A spreadsheet | a table, as a CSV file | it holds one row per record and one column per value |
| A person who reads it on a screen | a web page | it can show a styled table, a chart or a button |
Each one is a copy made from the checked page.
A page kept for an AI stays markdown. A web page or a Word file holds layout as well as words. To an AI, that layout is extra text. It takes room in the window and adds no fact.4
What do you get when you copy a reply?
It depends on where you paste it. Paste a reply into an email or a document, and you usually get the finished page. Paste it into a plain text box, such as a form on a website or a text editor, and you get the marks. Some places give plain text that has lost its shape. So look at what you pasted before you send it. For a plain text box, ask for the reply as plain text, with no markdown. To copy the marks themselves, copy a code block.
When a fact changes, which file do you change?
The markdown page you keep. The web page, the Word file and the CSV are copies made from it. Check each copy against the page: every line is there, and says the same thing. When a fact changes, change the page, then make each copy again from it. A copy that you fix by hand no longer matches its page. Fix a rule only in the Word file, and the page and the web page still say the old rule.
Figure 0.3.3. One page, many copies. You change the page, never a copy.
Check yourself
Question 1 / 9
0 answered
Why do you see a heading in a reply, and never the ## in front of it?
Sources
- Owner
- Panaversity