LLM Summaries are bland and repetitive

This was another great discussion with Catherine Liu. I’d just written about another interview of hers in Trauma, Virtue and Liberal Elites. Chris was effusive about Catherine’s book (which I’ve purchased and is in my queue) as well as her engaging writing style, which is a far sight from the dry, academic and often-impenetrable style that has established itself as the standard.

Virtue Hoarders and the Rejection of Liberalism (w/ Catherine Liu) by The Chris Hedges Report (YouTube)

For fun, I used a service I’d learned about recently that lets you summarize a video. It’s called tl;dw (too long; didn’t watch). When I tried a different 90-minute video, it complained that the transcript was too long. When I tried a five-minute video that was a cartoon with no dialogue, it complained that there was no transcript.

It managed to summarize this video as follows, but be warned: this is the standard LLM wall of text with no small amount of redundancy. Overall, the summary contains some good recapitulations of Catherine’s thesis. It is unclear the degree to which the LLM elucidated this all from the transcript itself, but it more or less follows the discussion. Unfortunately, it lost all of the flavor that these two erudite and funny scholars and human beings brought to the conversation. There are no citations of pithy passages, as I would have done had I been focusing more on the video as it played.

For example, the following direct quote from the video, at 22:40, is relevant, and a much more memorable formulation of Liu’s thesis than the dry summary below.

“I can totally understand the average American going, you know, what I would
prefer? The real thing—red blood, red meat, hate workers but speak-my-anger guy than those of you who are telling me I’m inferior, who tell me that my life choices are terrible, and who are going to punish me anyway. I’d rather be punished by the big, orange baby than by the Ozempic-shooting, Hollywood-liberal mogul.”

That really pops, no?

In order to clean up the transcript, I had the benefit of actually listening to Liu as I was proofreading it. The LLM most likely just had the raw text input, which looks like this,

so I can totally Vibe understand the average American going you know what I would
prefer the real thing red blood red meat you know hate workers but um speak my
anger guy then those of you who are telling me I’m inferior who tell me that
my life my my my life choices are terrible and who are going to punish me anyway I’d rather be punished by the Big
Orange baby than by the you know uh OIC um OIC shooting you know hollyw
Hollywood um liberal Mogul

There are a lot of places to go wrong in that transcript if you don’t have any context or understanding of the subject matter. It’s kind of a word salad if you’re not following along.

Without further ado, here is the LLM summary. I will highlight the bits I found to be particularly appropriate or illuminating, as a navigational aid through the wall of text. I have also added hints to indicate where I noticed repetition. At that point, I stopped highlighting.

“Catherine Liu’s “Virtue Hoarders” critiques the professional managerial class (PMC) for betraying the working class while seeking alignment with oligarchic power structures. This class, which includes academics, media professionals, and nonprofit leaders, is characterized by a form of liberal elitism that prioritizes individual virtue signaling over meaningful political actions or policies that genuinely address workers’ rights and economic inequality. Liu argues that rather than serving the interests of the broader public, the PMC engages in moral panics, cultural wars, and identity politics that obscure serious economic discussions and fail to advocate for structural changes necessary to support everyday Americans. Instead of fostering solidarity among diverse working populations, this class often demonizes those it perceives as beneath them and promotes a narrow vision of progress that serves their own interests but neglects the broader disempowerment experienced by the working class. Liu warns that this trajectory creates an environment ripe for reactionary politics, ultimately harming democracy and civic engagement. The conversation highlights the need for a leftist resurgence that prioritizes economic justice and acts in solidarity with working-class struggles, rejecting the superficiality of contemporary identity politics. [It’s repeating here, nearly directly] In “Virtue Hoarders,” Catherine Liu critiques the professional managerial class (PMC) for prioritizing individualism and virtue signaling while betraying the working class and perpetuating a disempowered society. She argues that the PMC, captured by liberal values, focuses on culture wars over meaningful policies, diminishing solidarity and supporting oligarchic interests. Liu calls for a leftist movement that engages with economic issues rather than identity politics to empower workers and revive democracy. [It’s repeating here again, nearly directly] Catherine Liu’s “Virtue Hoarders” critiques the professional managerial class for prioritizing individual virtue over genuine working-class interests, arguing that this class engages in culture wars instead of meaningful economic advocacy, ultimately harming democracy. Catherine Liu critiques the professional managerial class for prioritizing virtue signaling over genuine worker advocacy, undermining democracy. Catherine Liu critiques the PMC for substituting virtue signaling for real worker advocacy.”

You can see how the “summary” is actually about three times longer than it needs to be, as it is quite repetitive—like a student writing an essay that has to hit a certain word count—while, at the same time, eliding much of the value that the discussion added to the themes from the book itself. The summary of the video ended up being more of a blurb for her book.

Now that I’ve examined the initial response in more detail, I realized that I could try summarizing it again, with Copilot. The result is below.

“In “Virtue Hoarders,” Catherine Liu critiques the professional managerial class (PMC) for prioritizing individual virtue signaling over meaningful political actions and policies that support workers’ rights and economic equality. Liu argues that this class, which includes academics, media professionals, and nonprofit leaders, engages in moral panics, culture wars, and identity politics, ultimately betraying the working class and perpetuating oligarchic power structures. She calls for a leftist resurgence that prioritizes economic justice and solidarity with working-class struggles, rejecting the superficiality of contemporary identity politics to empower workers and revive democracy.”

There ya go. You can skip an eminently human, wide-ranging, and idiomatic discussion rooted in decades worth of human experience … or you can read a single paragraph that summarizes Liu’s book instead of the discussion.

For most people, it won’t matter because they’ll be more interested in the Cliff Notes version to “prove” that they read the material.