“To summarise, you need to understand what the paper is saying. To shorten text, not so much.”
The test was a 50-page Netspar paper on the €1.6 trillion overhaul of Dutch pensions. Its main proposal, a Council of Stakeholders, fills about a quarter of the main text. ChatGPT’s summary left it out entirely and filled the gap with empty sentences. Shortening works when length tracks importance, and in any document worth summarising it doesn’t.