What is written by a model and what is not
A plain list of which parts of the product a language model writes, which parts are arithmetic or copied from a source, and how the two are kept apart.
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Language models are useful for reading many sources and writing a short explanation. They are unreliable with numbers. So the line we hold is this: a model may write sentences, and it may not originate a figure.
Written by a model
| Where | What the model writes | What it is given |
|---|---|---|
| Stock report | The read: drivers, risks, what changed. The plain-language business summary. The pre-earnings and post-earnings notes. | Dated news, filings and the company's figures |
| Movers | The explanation for an unusual move | Recent dated sources found by research |
| Themes | The reason each company fits a basket | Company data and filings |
| Signals | The mood label on Reddit discussion | The posts |
| Ask | The answer text | The results of its lookups in that conversation |
Not written by a model
- Every price, return, ratio and financial figure. Copied from the source or computed from it.
- The call and the price zones. A fixed rule. See How calls and zones are produced.
- Headlines and excerpts on the wire. The publisher's own words.
- Filings data: 13F positions, House trades, Form 4 trades. Parsed from the filings.
- Follow records, backtests and strategy baskets. Arithmetic on prices and filings.
- The briefing. Its sentences are assembled by code from templates and the facts. The same inputs always produce the same briefing.
- Agent runs. A rule evaluated against dated facts.
- These docs, the legal pages and the interface. Written and reviewed by a person.
How model writing is constrained
- The model is given the evidence. It is not asked what it knows.
- It is told to state a missing reason plainly. We have not found a confirmed reason for the move is an accepted output.
- Output that contradicts its inputs or comes back blank is rejected and not shown.
- Model-written text sits in its own panels, apart from the figures.
Which models
Generation runs through OpenAI's API. Sources for research come from a web search service. Text you type into Ask, and the data returned by its lookups, is sent to the model provider to produce the answer. See Security for what that includes.
Read next
- How calls and zones are producedThe call on a stock comes from a fixed scoring rule, not from a model's opinion. The inputs, the thresholds and where each price zone comes from.
- How sources work in AskAsk is a chat that answers from our data. Every figure in an answer has to come from a lookup made in that conversation, and the lookup is shown to you.
- Editorial standards and correctionsThe standard our published writing is held to, how comparisons with other products are handled, and what happens when you report an error.
Something here wrong or unclear? Tell us. Informational only, not investment advice.