ZDNET
There’s an art to writing effective chatbot prompts to get the results you want from your friendly neighborhood AI. Here’s how to up your prompt-writing game.
GIGO. It’s an acronym dating back to 1957 when the US Army’s William Mellin explained to a newspaper reporter that computers were limited by their input. It means “Garbage In, Garbage Out” and it applies as much to today’s incredible generative AI tools as it did back in 1957 to those clunky, old tube-based computing devices.
In the case of an AI like ChatGPT, there’s a lot of opportunity for both garbage in and garbage out. Keep in mind that we really don’t have any idea what’s been fed into ChatGPT as part of its training. We know that AI’s perception of facts is so fluid, it’s practically qualified to be an American politician. In fact, OpenAI (the makers of ChatGPT) co-founder John Schulman says, “Our biggest concern was around factuality because the model likes to fabricate things.”
Keep that in mind, because no matter how good your prompts are, there’s always the possibility that the AI will simply make stuff up. That said, there’s a lot you can do when crafting prompts to ensure the best possible outcome. That’s what we’ll be exploring in this how-to.
How to write effective ChatGPT prompts
To avoid the GIGO factor, your best bet is to write prompts that encourage the LLM (large language model) within ChatGPT to provide the best possible answers.
In fact, writing effective prompts has become its own highly-paid discipline — “prompt engineering.” ZDNET’s Sabrina Ortiz wrote an article entitled, “Do you like asking ChatGPT questions? You could get paid (a lot) for it,” that explored this new employment opportunity.
So, pay attention to the rest of this article. Who knows? Reading it could help you build the skills to become one of those highly paid prompt engineers. Apparently, these gigs can pay from $175,000 to $335,000 per year.
1. Talk to the AI like you would talk to a person
One of the more interesting things I’ve had to get used to when working with ChatGPT is that you don’t program it, you talk to it. As a formally trained programmer, I’ve had to leave a lot of habits by the wayside when engaging with AI. Talking to it (and with it) requires a mindset shift.
When I say talk to it like a person, I mean talk to it like you would a co-worker or team member. If that’s hard to do, give it a name. Alexa is taken, so maybe think of it as “Bob.” This helps because when you talk to Bob, you might include conversational details, little anecdotes that give your story texture, a variety of possibilities, and more.
When talking to a person, it would be natural to expect someone to miss your point initially and require clarification. It would be natural for someone with whom you’re speaking to veer away from the topic at hand and need to be wrangled back on topic. It would be natural to fill in the backstory and ask complex questions, and it would also be natural to have to dig in, restating some of those questions based on the answers you got back.
