[nateroling]

Seeing the Gemini 3 capabilities, I can imagine a near future where file formats are effectively irrelevant.

[qart]

I have family members with health conditions that require periodic monitoring. For some tests, a phlebotomist comes home. For some tests, we go to a hospital. For some other tests, we go to a specialized testing center. They all give us PDFs in their own formats. I manually enter the data to my spreadsheet, for easy tracking. I use LLMs for some extraction, but they still miss a lot. At least for the foreseeable future, no LLM will ever guarantee that all the data has been extracted correctly. By "guarantee", I mean someone's life may depend on it. For now, doctors take up the responsibility of ensuring the data is correct and complete. But not having to deal with PDFs would make at least a part of their job (and our shared responsibilities) easier.

[s0rce]

Can you elaborate? Are you never reading papers directly but only using Gemini to reformat or combine/summarize?

[nateroling]

I mean that when a computer can visually understand a document and reformat and reinterpret it in any imaginable way, who cares how it’s stored? When a png or a pdf or a markdown doc can all be be read and reinterpreted into an infographic or a database or an audiobook or an interactive infographic the original format won’t matter.

[DANmode]

Files.

Truth in general, if we aren't careful.

[doc_ick]

Tell that to publishing companies.

[sansseriff]

Seriously. More people need to wake up to this. Older generations can keep arguing over display formats if they want. Meanwhile younger undergrad and grad students are getting more and more accustomed to LLMs forming the front end for any knowledge they consume. Why would research papers be any different.

[JadeNB]

> Meanwhile younger undergrad and grad students are getting more and more accustomed to LLMs forming the front end for any knowledge they consume.

Well, that's terrifying. I mean, I knew it about undergrads, but I sure hoped people going into grad school would be aware of the dangers of making your main contact with research, where subtle details are important, through a known-distorting filter.

(I mean, I'd still be kinda terrified if you said that grad students first encounter papers through LLMs. But if it is the front end for all knowledge they consume? Absolutely dystopian.)