From Completion to Conversation
A language model only knows how to complete text —
so what if I fabricate a chat log and ask it to finish it?
You can only predict the next token, right?
So I'll craft a format: "Here's an unfinished chat log — fill in the assistant's reply."
Step 1
Assemble a "fake chat log":
write the user's message, then deliberately leave the assistant's line blank
write the user's message, then deliberately leave the assistant's line blank
Round 1: What does the model see? What does it complete?
User: Who is Zixia the Fairy? (紫霞仙子, a character from the classic Chinese film A Chinese Odyssey)
Assistant:
Assistant:
↓ Model starts completing from "Assistant:" onward
Assistant completes:
Step 2
Feed the entire text to the Base model —
it will do exactly one thing: complete from the end
it will do exactly one thing: complete from the end
Step 3
When the user sends another message, concatenate "the previous reply + the new question"
into a longer pending-completion text, then send it to the model again
into a longer pending-completion text, then send it to the model again
Round 2: The user speaks again — the first-round answer is appended and sent
Assistant completes:
Well, well — the model actually nailed it!!!