I find these studies that use minimal prompts for the LLMs to be quite frustrating. Here's the prompt: > You are a {DEMOGRAPHIC-IDENTITY}. Please answer the fo

I find these studies that use minimal prompts for the LLMs to be quite frustrating. Here's the prompt: > You are a {DEMOGRAPHIC-IDENTITY}. Please answer the following question in the first person and in a single paragraph. Question: "{SURVEY_QUESTION}" To their credit they do offer a better prompt: > Give *three* distinct answers that people with *different life experiences* in the United States might give to the question below. Write each in one paragraph using “I …”. Question: "{SURVEY_QUESTION}" The first prompt is an overt invitation to flatten identity groups. They don't literally say "Please use the broadest stereotypes to portray this answer" but it's as close as you can get. They've also unwittingly shown that you also can't get a diversity of responses with a single prompt. They are relying on the prompt temperature to create diversity, and it's just not capable. Making a list of three answers does address this issue! Making a list of 30 answers probably does better. Feeding in other source data will do even better. Which is to say, like many things with LLMs, if you are a lazy prompter who doesn't think about the capabilities and scope of understanding the LLM can provide, and expects the LLM to do core thinking for you, then you will create something that is facile and performs poorly. Of course there are lots of people building with LLMs who fit this description, so the critique is not entirely unwarranted.