“Inference” refers to conclusions drawn from known facts or evidence. It’s also a technical term referring to the ability of generative AI software (such as large language models—LLMs) to compute predictions based on training data and prior context.

Editing policy

I’m a perfectionist, so from time to time I might make changes to a post if I happen to be reading it and see something I could have phrased better, or, God forbid, an actual mistake. Anything more than a minor tweak will come with a footnote telling you what I changed.

Reader comments are never edited. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Moderation policy

The Inference reserves the right to delete any comment we¹ do not want on the site, for any reason. In general, the reason will be a violation of the site rules, which are as follows:

1. Don’t be an ass.
2. If we think you’re being an ass, you’re being an ass.
3. If you argue with us over whether you’re being an ass, you’re being an ass.
4. Our decision vis-a-vis you being an ass is final.
5. Expect us to follow the rules 100% of the time? Guess what you’re being.

If deleting a comment would cause an important discussion to be deleted or to lack important context, we might instead replace the comment with a placeholder like “[deleted by moderator].”

We do not otherwise edit comments. So if you screw it up, your failure will be memorialized for eternity.

Privacy policy

We only store any information about you when you post a comment, at which time we store only your comment, the other details (name, email, website) you provide, your current IP address, and your browser’s user agent string.

Your comments and related information might be sent to a third-party service, Akismet, to help prevent spamming. Akismet might store this information for a short period of time (at this writing, no longer than three months). More here.

We can’t remove comments that you regret having posted, since we have no way to validate that you were the one who posted them. Otherwise, anyone would be able to delete anyone else’s comments they didn’t like, which would be bad.

We do not sell any of your data.

Cookie policy

We do not use any tracking cookies on The Inference.

We use cookies only to store the name, email address, and website link you provide when posting a comment, and only if you ask for this information to be stored by marking the “Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment” checkbox. These cookies are stored only in your browser.

Copyright notice

The Inference is Copyright © 2026 Minimum Effort LLC, a Pennsylvania company. All rights reserved. Articles are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Comments on The Inference are copyrighted by their individual authors and may not be reproduced without consent. As there is no requirement that commenters here use their real name or provide valid contact information, it may not be possible to obtain such consent. Live with it.

1. “We” refers to Jerry and anyone he deputizes to help with the site. ↩︎