Editing Openai/6939b23e-87cc-8001-bdd9-9546d1143ce9 (section)

=== Assistant: Top-p is NOT a “creative add-on” or something that makes new options. ===
Top-p is NOT a “creative add-on” or something that makes new options.
It does not combine tokens or promote low-rank tokens upward.
It only removes low-probability options until the remaining set contains p amount of total probability.

So your old belief was:
“Top-p mixes together some lower options and presents them as an alternative.”
But the reality is:
Top-p only shrinks the candidate pool from the bottom upward.

Now the question:
Why does top-p exist at all? What problem does it solve?