As the test shows the real gain is somewhat marginal to most people, but still some ppl claim a wide skills portfolio is required to move faster or save tokens. Mixed feelings, I personally use superpowers as my basic setup - and only them.
Yes all the caveman spoke English like its freaking Flinstone. Like wtf is the caveman dilect, just english words with some randomly skipped? Why not try with actual other human languages and see if there is a token benefit in savings
If you just want a smaller vocabulary, use French? If your goal is to communicate to an LLM, maybe saving tokens isn't the all in win, unless you like reading assert gronkHitThing(true)
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the bulk of my token usage is not what I type in - it’s that data the AI is processing for me. I’m shocked they even got an 8% reduction.
alt.nerd.obsessive FAQ v1.4
In the episode where they were filming the Radioactive Man movie [1995], the comic book store guy tells Bart that he can find out the star of the RM movie. He promptly posts a message to alt.nerd.obsessive which states "Need know star RM pic". This information is relayed through the nerd world until it reaches a nerd hiding under the table at a meeting of movie moguls casting the film. He relays back the answer immediately (Rainier Wolfcastle).
I think it's funny this works somewhat, but that's not what the goal is, IMO. The goal is to have the model do this internally in its "thinking" stage. On the very rare occasions in the past where gpt5 leaked its true internal thinking, the "CoT" was itself kinda similar. Instead of the open source "so the user wants me to... but wait... maybe I should... blahblah...", GPT5 was using internal traces like "try x.. no.. try y... no.. from x yes then z yes...". That's probably more token saving, or faster responses, if you can get the model to remain accurate.
Say caveman, cavemen ... unheard[0] cavewoman. No good. Bad.
When Sabrewulf[1] come, some fight, some run ... some run in cave. No good. Bad.
Token cost. Seem smart less token. But already discount. No profit.
Use less token? Price go up.
What money?
You should be bothered by the persistent & popular use of the "caveman" terminology and the myth surrounding it. However, from a dedicated amateur linguistic point of view, the "caveman language" that so many people seem to know by default is kind of remarkable. Perhaps it points to (it doesn't) some deeper, ancient understanding.
[0] this is a joke because the caveman myth comes with a lot of misogynistic baggage and you should have a problem with it. Also because I made you read this. (this is not an explanation of the joke itself, that's up to you)
[1] the sabre-tooth cat is a trope that over-represents its relationship with people. I mean it's extinct, but it was around "back then", right?
Isn’t spoken language in general and English in particular famously 50% redundant? Does that not provide the same (if not more) benefit to the model when narrowing the scope of intent?
Why don't we just use a highly specialized domain-specific language that describes the code we want generated? Natural language is too inexact and ambiguous.
Does anyone more familiar with the technology know if these AI models treat abugidas like Thai or abjads like Arabic differently when it comes to token usage?
Specifically abjads since as far as I am aware their difference from alphabetical and abugida scripts is that they infer the vowels instead of explicitly marking them.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 9.9 ms ] threadWhat are your thoughts on it?
Also it was tested on reasoning low, i'd have liked to have them tested on higher reasoning levels.
Also, this really should be more precise that it’s talking about neo-caveman. Legit caveman no speak English.
When Sabrewulf[1] come, some fight, some run ... some run in cave. No good. Bad.
Token cost. Seem smart less token. But already discount. No profit.
Use less token? Price go up.
What money?
You should be bothered by the persistent & popular use of the "caveman" terminology and the myth surrounding it. However, from a dedicated amateur linguistic point of view, the "caveman language" that so many people seem to know by default is kind of remarkable. Perhaps it points to (it doesn't) some deeper, ancient understanding.
[0] this is a joke because the caveman myth comes with a lot of misogynistic baggage and you should have a problem with it. Also because I made you read this. (this is not an explanation of the joke itself, that's up to you)
[1] the sabre-tooth cat is a trope that over-represents its relationship with people. I mean it's extinct, but it was around "back then", right?
Specifically abjads since as far as I am aware their difference from alphabetical and abugida scripts is that they infer the vowels instead of explicitly marking them.