What is context?

1Question

I ask an AI for the first time. "Polish this."

It does. But somehow it does not sound like me. I never said who will read it, why I want it polished, or what tone I am after.

After a hundred or so exchanges, I ask the very same thing. "Polish this." This time it comes back the way I wanted.

Not a single word of mine has changed. So what has?

2Structure

One question and one answer make a turn. I write, the AI reads, and an answer comes back. One loop.

I read the answer and write my next line. If I like it, I go on. If it is off, I ask for a change. The AI takes that in and answers again.

As we go back and forth like this, turn after turn, two things build up.

• The original conversation, as expressed. The words we actually exchanged. They stay exactly as written.
• The context that is not in the original. What we never put into words, but came to know about each other along the way. What kind of writing I like. What matters to me.

It is like an iceberg. What shows above the waterline is the original conversation. What lies below it is the context. Both grow with every exchange: a little above, a lot below.

And the next question does not travel alone. It passes below the waterline and carries the context built up so far.

3Experiment

Let the conversation run for a hundred turns.

• The first turn. I ask, and the AI answers. After one exchange, a small piece of ice forms at the waterline. Above it are the words we exchanged. Below it is what those words do not hold.
• Up to the hundredth turn. With every exchange the ice grows. It is one mass, with no lines anywhere.
• The hundred-and-first turn. A turn like any other. As it falls as a single drop, the mass below the waterline becomes a clear structure.

4Understanding

Context is not in the original conversation. Read the original from beginning to end, and you will not find it in the words.

Context does not appear all at once. It builds up turn by turn: I ask, the AI answers, and I take that answer and ask again.

And context built up this way becomes structure. The hundred-and-first turn was no different from the hundred before it. The mass became a structure because what those hundred turns had built, back and forth, was already there.

What is above the waterline rests on what is below. The same line landed differently not because the words changed, but because what had built up beneath them changed.