arxiv Preprint – Summarization is (Almost) Dead

In this episode we discuss Summarization is (Almost) Dead
by Xiao Pu, Mingqi Gao, Xiaojun Wan. The paper investigates the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) in summary generation. Through new datasets and human evaluation experiments, the authors find that LLM-generated summaries are preferred by evaluators compared to human-written summaries and fine-tuned model summaries. LLM-generated summaries exhibit improved factual consistency and fewer instances of extrinsic hallucinations, leading the authors to suggest that traditional text summarization methods may no longer be necessary. However, the authors emphasize the need for further exploration in areas such as dataset creation and evaluation methods.