4 ms·

I'm not sure how you're defining skill, but it seems like you can get better at prompt engineering, and some people are consistently better at it than others. I

I'm not sure how you're defining skill, but it seems like you can get better at prompt engineering, and some people are consistently better at it than others. I'd call it a skill, just like framing a search query in Google is a skill. Sorry if that's weak and pointless.

menacingly 4y ago
you can get better at astrology, I'd still advise against carving out a niche there. Claiming you can tame a hurricane of untraceable parameters with guesswork, on rapidly changing systems whose designers have the goal of obviating the need to format queries in magical ways, is dicey at best.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  I think you're basically saying that this thing is a) a black box, and b) more complex than any human can pretend to understand, even if we cracked open the box and looked inside. But, that does not close off the possibility of learning what ways we can poke and prod it to affect the results. It would be interesting to run an experiment to test whether some people are consistently better at generating desirable results from an AI model. My money would be that they can, even at this early stage of "prompt engineering" as a discipline, let alone 5 or ten years from now. You may also be saying "don't call it engineering, it feels more like black magic," a position I would be sympathetic to. But, I think a lot of realms of engineering deal with uncontrollable elements we don't understand and have to just deal with, with increasing levels of control as our disciplines become more sophisticated.
  - menacingly 4y ago
    I actually appreciate the good-faith rephrasing, and it's correct, but I think my precise concern failed to come across. It's not "local man frowns upon change", it's that I think we've created the mirage of place to add value that is very temporary but may look attractive to people perhaps eventually replaced by this very tech. It's a sweet "don't worry" song while an absolutely exploding area of innovation is actively trying to make it exist less.
the_gipsy 4y ago
The problem is calling it "engineering".
- Casteil 4y ago
  Sounds more legit than "prompt wizardry"
- tnzk 4y ago
  Agree, it's such a word people here have strong opinions about. But what is your suggestion? I feel it would be recieved easily if it was LLM Prompt Cheat sheet or something, though I wouldn't have seen it on HN.
  - incongruity 4y ago
    Prompt framing? Prompt optimization?
    - sixstringtheory 4y ago
      I’d go with prompt hacking or prompt bashing

menacingly 4y ago

you can get better at astrology, I'd still advise against carving out a niche there. Claiming you can tame a hurricane of untraceable parameters with guesswork, on rapidly changing systems whose designers have the goal of obviating the need to format queries in magical ways, is dicey at best.

karaterobot 4y ago
I think you're basically saying that this thing is a) a black box, and b) more complex than any human can pretend to understand, even if we cracked open the box and looked inside. But, that does not close off the possibility of learning what ways we can poke and prod it to affect the results. It would be interesting to run an experiment to test whether some people are consistently better at generating desirable results from an AI model. My money would be that they can, even at this early stage of "prompt engineering" as a discipline, let alone 5 or ten years from now. You may also be saying "don't call it engineering, it feels more like black magic," a position I would be sympathetic to. But, I think a lot of realms of engineering deal with uncontrollable elements we don't understand and have to just deal with, with increasing levels of control as our disciplines become more sophisticated.
- menacingly 4y ago
  I actually appreciate the good-faith rephrasing, and it's correct, but I think my precise concern failed to come across. It's not "local man frowns upon change", it's that I think we've created the mirage of place to add value that is very temporary but may look attractive to people perhaps eventually replaced by this very tech. It's a sweet "don't worry" song while an absolutely exploding area of innovation is actively trying to make it exist less.

the_gipsy 4y ago

The problem is calling it "engineering".

Casteil 4y ago
Sounds more legit than "prompt wizardry"
tnzk 4y ago
Agree, it's such a word people here have strong opinions about. But what is your suggestion? I feel it would be recieved easily if it was LLM Prompt Cheat sheet or something, though I wouldn't have seen it on HN.
- incongruity 4y ago
  Prompt framing? Prompt optimization?
  - sixstringtheory 4y ago
    I’d go with prompt hacking or prompt bashing