4 ms·

Is it just me or are the self proclaimed "prompt engineers" on Twitter just a new iteration of crypto bro grifters? Dont get me wrong, I think LLMs and generati

Is it just me or are the self proclaimed "prompt engineers" on Twitter just a new iteration of crypto bro grifters? Dont get me wrong, I think LLMs and generative AI are really cool and useful and have already improved my productivity to some degree, I just get no-talent, self-promoter, vaporware vibes from people I see pushing "prompt engineering" the hardest (Edit: I agree with the premise of article, I just wanted to rant about about AI bros)

bcrosby95 3y ago
It reminds me more of a social media manager, but having having them say they work in "engagement engineering".
taylorius 3y ago
Would it be a proper trend without it's attendant grifters?
gensym 3y ago
Anything that feels "techy" but doesn't require practice, study, or math is always going to be a magnet for grifters who were doing beer bongs while others were learning to code. (Edit: I'm not trying to imply anything about the linked author of this piece. They actually do have code examples!)
- zemo 3y ago
  the idea that learning to code is virtuous and having fun is bad needs to go away. Lots of people learned to code AND did beer bongs.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    also lots of people didn't learn to code and did not do beer bongs... and despite knowing those two attributes, we know nothing about them
  - kuhewa 3y ago
    I think the point is some people didn't do the former
  - gensym 3y ago
    Then clearly I'm not talking about them. FWIW, I don't think learning to code is inherently virtuous. I do think putting in the time to be good at something is more virtuous than trying to find the easiest way to latch onto whatever the hot new industry is, which is my impression of most prompt engineering at this point.
  - dmingod666 3y ago
    It's not about fun. Nuance is the key differentiator. Conscientiousness is (correctly, imo) valued because correctness matters (a lot).
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    You guys aren't having fun coding?
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > a magnet for grifters who were doing beer bongs while others were learning to code My experience as a test dev is that testers, especially the ones who can't code, are into credentialism and overly-technical taxonomies that describe their field. I claim people who can't do get certified (and those who make money from the certifiables teach).
seydor 3y ago
more like influencers? or more properly attention seekers
paxys 3y ago
I hate to say it, but LLMs/AI are entering the "solution in search of a problem" phase. The tech is crazy powerful, no doubt, but it's going to be gradually adopted by companies and woven into products we use. It will not immediately lead to hundreds of successful billion dollar startups as "AI bros" on Twitter will have you believe.
- jerrygenser 3y ago
  Agreed, it's kind of really useful for a lot of things people have been using NLP to solve. In some ways the human interaction piece expand the scope but overall it doesn't mean NLP suddenly solved all problems
- chefandy 3y ago
  Surprised it took this long! In my last job in academia, people started trying to turn their ho-hum ideas into gold by attaching "deep learning" or related terms around the same time other people started doing the same thing with "blockchain." Some people had great ideas and some of them turned out to be useful. But it was painfully obvious to everybody but the person talking when they were trying to obfuscate mediocrity with fancy words. Maybe they were there all along and people just stopped ignoring them? Maybe it's all of the hucksters whose absurd coin schemes dried up or never panned out looking for a new hook?
haolez 3y ago
Yeah, there is a pretty annoying pattern right now on Twitter of such accounts trying to get some engagement. It usually goes like this: "Everything is about to change. You are being left behind. Read this thread to know more"
- highwayman47 3y ago
  “99% of users are stuck in beginner mode”
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I agree with you, but I think you should read the article. The author makes this exact point: "Much of it is coming from individuals who are peddling around an awful lot of "Prompting" and very little "Engineering"." Basically, the author is arguing that just fiddling around with the words you enter in a ChatGPT window is not prompt "engineering". Instead, he talks about some specific techniques for e.g. blending prompts, indicating some words deserve more attention, etc.
- thethethethe 3y ago
  Yeah my comment isn't about the substance of the article (I read it and don't have any complaints) it's just a general complaint about the concepts mentioned in the title. And yes, I know this is a classic hacker news trope, I just couldn't help myself
rapind 3y ago
It’s the new agile. I bet there’s already prompt engineering books, courses, consultants, and coaches.
newswasboring 3y ago
It's not just twitter, YouTube is also a cesspool of such stuff. Some channels are straight up reading the docs in the video with no insight provided. And the thumbnails, why are the optimising like a Mr Beast video with huge head in the thumbnail.
anukin 3y ago
Siraj Rawal the infamous ai influencer is back to being an AI influenza again. I get an almost accurate estimate of overhype by following tech influenzas now.
cjf101 3y ago
Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of people moving in to capitalize on the space between what people imagine they can do with LLM's, and what is currently possible. The difficulty in estimating what the LLM is likely to do with an output, the actual randomness that is involved in getting there, and the variability of the output creates a situation where you might as well put up an "INSERT GRIFT HERE" sign. Even this post (which I think is making some pretty well informed and intentioned suggestions) exists largely because getting exactly what you want out of an LLM can be pretty difficult. Even fairly static tasks like data extraction can have aggravatingly variable outputs. I don't think that most of these are the _right_ way to get to the goal but are rather, largely clever hacks that can help a user try and nudge the LLM towards the desired latent space when adjusting the instructions fails.
gremlinsinc 3y ago
I'm a dev, obsessed with ai, I'm building a startup around it now, I think of prompt engineers like spaghetti coders writing very insecure and buggy WordPress plugins and themes and calling themselves an engineer. I've worked in PHP most of my career, but there's more engineering in an mvc than using an auto install script and installing and configuring, plugins.i guess my point is, I kinda just roll my eyes anymore. I feel the same way with prompt engineers who don't know how to use langchain or llama index etc and aren't working on some kind of cognitive architecture to milk gpt4 for all it's worth. tldr: I think prompt engineering is a great, legit field, but half the people in it are pretenders, although, if they can use gpt half as good as they claim, then gpt can handle most of the coding etc.. so it's probably easier to blur the line a little.

bcrosby95 3y ago

It reminds me more of a social media manager, but having having them say they work in "engagement engineering".

taylorius 3y ago

Would it be a proper trend without it's attendant grifters?

gensym 3y ago

Anything that feels "techy" but doesn't require practice, study, or math is always going to be a magnet for grifters who were doing beer bongs while others were learning to code. (Edit: I'm not trying to imply anything about the linked author of this piece. They actually do have code examples!)

zemo 3y ago
the idea that learning to code is virtuous and having fun is bad needs to go away. Lots of people learned to code AND did beer bongs.
- airstrike 3y ago
  also lots of people didn't learn to code and did not do beer bongs... and despite knowing those two attributes, we know nothing about them
- kuhewa 3y ago
  I think the point is some people didn't do the former
- gensym 3y ago
  Then clearly I'm not talking about them. FWIW, I don't think learning to code is inherently virtuous. I do think putting in the time to be good at something is more virtuous than trying to find the easiest way to latch onto whatever the hot new industry is, which is my impression of most prompt engineering at this point.
- dmingod666 3y ago
  It's not about fun. Nuance is the key differentiator. Conscientiousness is (correctly, imo) valued because correctness matters (a lot).
- moffkalast 3y ago
  You guys aren't having fun coding?
drewcoo 3y ago
> a magnet for grifters who were doing beer bongs while others were learning to code My experience as a test dev is that testers, especially the ones who can't code, are into credentialism and overly-technical taxonomies that describe their field. I claim people who can't do get certified (and those who make money from the certifiables teach).

seydor 3y ago

more like influencers? or more properly attention seekers

paxys 3y ago

I hate to say it, but LLMs/AI are entering the "solution in search of a problem" phase. The tech is crazy powerful, no doubt, but it's going to be gradually adopted by companies and woven into products we use. It will not immediately lead to hundreds of successful billion dollar startups as "AI bros" on Twitter will have you believe.

jerrygenser 3y ago
Agreed, it's kind of really useful for a lot of things people have been using NLP to solve. In some ways the human interaction piece expand the scope but overall it doesn't mean NLP suddenly solved all problems
chefandy 3y ago
Surprised it took this long! In my last job in academia, people started trying to turn their ho-hum ideas into gold by attaching "deep learning" or related terms around the same time other people started doing the same thing with "blockchain." Some people had great ideas and some of them turned out to be useful. But it was painfully obvious to everybody but the person talking when they were trying to obfuscate mediocrity with fancy words. Maybe they were there all along and people just stopped ignoring them? Maybe it's all of the hucksters whose absurd coin schemes dried up or never panned out looking for a new hook?

haolez 3y ago

Yeah, there is a pretty annoying pattern right now on Twitter of such accounts trying to get some engagement. It usually goes like this: "Everything is about to change. You are being left behind. Read this thread to know more"

highwayman47 3y ago
“99% of users are stuck in beginner mode”

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I agree with you, but I think you should read the article. The author makes this exact point: "Much of it is coming from individuals who are peddling around an awful lot of "Prompting" and very little "Engineering"." Basically, the author is arguing that just fiddling around with the words you enter in a ChatGPT window is not prompt "engineering". Instead, he talks about some specific techniques for e.g. blending prompts, indicating some words deserve more attention, etc.

thethethethe 3y ago
Yeah my comment isn't about the substance of the article (I read it and don't have any complaints) it's just a general complaint about the concepts mentioned in the title. And yes, I know this is a classic hacker news trope, I just couldn't help myself

rapind 3y ago

It’s the new agile. I bet there’s already prompt engineering books, courses, consultants, and coaches.

newswasboring 3y ago

It's not just twitter, YouTube is also a cesspool of such stuff. Some channels are straight up reading the docs in the video with no insight provided. And the thumbnails, why are the optimising like a Mr Beast video with huge head in the thumbnail.

anukin 3y ago

Siraj Rawal the infamous ai influencer is back to being an AI influenza again. I get an almost accurate estimate of overhype by following tech influenzas now.

cjf101 3y ago

Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of people moving in to capitalize on the space between what people imagine they can do with LLM's, and what is currently possible. The difficulty in estimating what the LLM is likely to do with an output, the actual randomness that is involved in getting there, and the variability of the output creates a situation where you might as well put up an "INSERT GRIFT HERE" sign. Even this post (which I think is making some pretty well informed and intentioned suggestions) exists largely because getting exactly what you want out of an LLM can be pretty difficult. Even fairly static tasks like data extraction can have aggravatingly variable outputs. I don't think that most of these are the _right_ way to get to the goal but are rather, largely clever hacks that can help a user try and nudge the LLM towards the desired latent space when adjusting the instructions fails.

gremlinsinc 3y ago

I'm a dev, obsessed with ai, I'm building a startup around it now, I think of prompt engineers like spaghetti coders writing very insecure and buggy WordPress plugins and themes and calling themselves an engineer. I've worked in PHP most of my career, but there's more engineering in an mvc than using an auto install script and installing and configuring, plugins.i guess my point is, I kinda just roll my eyes anymore. I feel the same way with prompt engineers who don't know how to use langchain or llama index etc and aren't working on some kind of cognitive architecture to milk gpt4 for all it's worth. tldr: I think prompt engineering is a great, legit field, but half the people in it are pretenders, although, if they can use gpt half as good as they claim, then gpt can handle most of the coding etc.. so it's probably easier to blur the line a little.