3 ms·

I know everyone scoffs at the concept of 'prompt engineer', but it really is an essential craft that we're going to have to come to terms with when interacting

by jcims 4y ago

I know everyone scoffs at the concept of 'prompt engineer', but it really is an essential craft that we're going to have to come to terms with when interacting with large language models. Seeking suggestions on a more comprehensive prompt: https://sharegpt.com/c/sckAPvV https://sharegpt.com/c/sckAPvV Trying it out: https://sharegpt.com/c/LbpEIxi https://sharegpt.com/c/LbpEIxi

flir 4y ago
Please see my "expert system" approach elsewhere in the thread. I felt it worked really well.
dekhn 4y ago
if you want more prompt engineers, just have kids and as part of their growing up, teach them to prompt engineer and make it mildly competitive. Some fraction of them will be better than nearly any current prompt engineer. children: the OG AGI
Enginerrrd 4y ago
I agree. I'm a civil engineer / project manager and so far I've been VERY impressed with chatGPT and, in particular GPT-4. However, a huge part of my job has always been translating vague desires into very precise specifications with constraints and expectations. Going further, it has often been my job to take those specs/constraints and then break them into chunks and feed them to junior staff who are often very smart, but lack domain specific context and knowledge. Giving them a bad prompt produces bad results. This article seems to be based largely on data collected with a rather poorly engineered prompt, IMO. He asked it a question that would be reasonable to ask a fellow physician. The problem is GPT is NOT a fellow physician with domain specific context and knowledge, and isn't aware of a bunch of implicit expectations they didn't realize they had. However, I actually think there's a really good chance that a better worded prompt would have scored a lot better here. This type of communication skill has always been hard for a lot of people, and will remain in high demand for a long time.
AmericanChopper 4y ago
I don’t scoff at it, but I do think it’s kinda funny. It’s essentially the same skill as being a “google search expert” in the sense that you need to be able to correctly understand the problem, and craft a good enough query to generate the answer you’re looking for. It’s always sort of been a tongue-in-cheek claim that googling skills are a valuable software engineering asset, and even though that’s a perfectly legitimate assertion, it’s entertaining to see it emerging at its own “engineering” discipline.
vl 4y ago
I think there will be no such profession because both people and models will adapt to better understand each other. This has already happened with Google - search got better over the years, but also people became better at doing good search queries! Before there were typists, now everyone is a typist! And so on, historically information entry/retrieval jobs are eliminated and are moved to users.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I think there will be no such profession because both people and models will adapt to better understand each other. People have been working to understand each other better for as long as there have been humans, and yet we have humans whose work is specialized in providing direction, instruction, evaluation, and feedback to other humans.

by jcims 4y ago

flir 4y ago

Please see my "expert system" approach elsewhere in the thread. I felt it worked really well.

dekhn 4y ago

if you want more prompt engineers, just have kids and as part of their growing up, teach them to prompt engineer and make it mildly competitive. Some fraction of them will be better than nearly any current prompt engineer. children: the OG AGI

Enginerrrd 4y ago

I agree. I'm a civil engineer / project manager and so far I've been VERY impressed with chatGPT and, in particular GPT-4. However, a huge part of my job has always been translating vague desires into very precise specifications with constraints and expectations. Going further, it has often been my job to take those specs/constraints and then break them into chunks and feed them to junior staff who are often very smart, but lack domain specific context and knowledge. Giving them a bad prompt produces bad results. This article seems to be based largely on data collected with a rather poorly engineered prompt, IMO. He asked it a question that would be reasonable to ask a fellow physician. The problem is GPT is NOT a fellow physician with domain specific context and knowledge, and isn't aware of a bunch of implicit expectations they didn't realize they had. However, I actually think there's a really good chance that a better worded prompt would have scored a lot better here. This type of communication skill has always been hard for a lot of people, and will remain in high demand for a long time.

AmericanChopper 4y ago

I don’t scoff at it, but I do think it’s kinda funny. It’s essentially the same skill as being a “google search expert” in the sense that you need to be able to correctly understand the problem, and craft a good enough query to generate the answer you’re looking for. It’s always sort of been a tongue-in-cheek claim that googling skills are a valuable software engineering asset, and even though that’s a perfectly legitimate assertion, it’s entertaining to see it emerging at its own “engineering” discipline.

vl 4y ago

I think there will be no such profession because both people and models will adapt to better understand each other. This has already happened with Google - search got better over the years, but also people became better at doing good search queries! Before there were typists, now everyone is a typist! And so on, historically information entry/retrieval jobs are eliminated and are moved to users.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I think there will be no such profession because both people and models will adapt to better understand each other. People have been working to understand each other better for as long as there have been humans, and yet we have humans whose work is specialized in providing direction, instruction, evaluation, and feedback to other humans.