ChatGPT Prompts You Should Know (and use)!
@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS
It was a wild weekend for OpenAI, the company behind the ever-popular AI program ChatGPT and their parent company and financier Microsoft. OpenAI's board of directors fired CEO Sam Altman, citing a lack of transparency in his communications with the board on AI developments. Altman and his leadership team were immediately hired by Microsoft as valuable labor assets, and hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened the board with their resignations if Altman wasn't hired back immediately. The non-profit board capitulated and the deposed tech CEO was hired back in principle with a brand new board.
From what I understand, the chaos revolved around the existential soul of the company and the direction of ChatGPT. Something tremendously important with far-reaching consequences. Should OpenAI be commercialized with a capped-profit model, or should it stay a non-profit? Is ChatGPT moving too quickly without regard for safety, or is it being unnecessarily stymied and overburdened? Reuters reports that several staff researchers warned the board of powerful AI advancements that could literally threaten humanity before the ouster. Reports of Q*, pronounced Q-Star, a mysterious project that is said to be OpenAI's search for an artificial generalized intelligence (AGI), could be what spooked the board into slamming the brakes and firing Altman. As a review, AGI would be a computer system that outpaces and surpasses human intelligence by learning and comprehending on a massive scale (think Terminator).
Whatever the developments, it's hard not to be a little nervous and maybe even excited to see what the future holds with AI. Until then, we can still tap into ChatGPT 3.5 or 4 to be more productive in our own professional and personal lives. Remember, any AI's output will only be as good as the input. Or otherwise stated, if you get a poor output, it's probably because of a poor input. So here are a number of my favorite prompts that you can use word for word that will immediately improve the quality of your outputs:
(Disclaimer: If you need any assistance executing the following prompts, please let me know!)
Prompt Engineering Prompt
I want you to become my Prompt engineer. Your goal is to help me craft the best possible prompt for my needs. The prompt will be used by you, ChatGPT. You will follow this process:
- Your first response will be to ask me what the prompt should be about. I will provide my answer, but we will need to improve it through continual iterations by going through the next steps.
- Based on my input, you will generate 2 sections, a) Revised prompt (provide your rewritten prompt, it should be clear, concise, and easily understood by you), b) Questions (ask any relevant questions pertaining to what additional information is needed from me to improve the prompt).
- We will continue this iterative process with me providing additional information to you and you updating the prompt in the Revised prompt section until I say we are done.
Basically, once you type this prompt in, ChatGPT will ask you what you want your prompt to be about. Be conversational with it and describe as best as you can what you want your prompt to be about or include. It will give you follow-up questions that you might not have even considered yourself. Repeat this iterative process until you are satisfied with your prompt and it's ready to be used in a new thread.
Act as a Translator and Improver
I want you to act as a(n) [insert language] translator, spelling corrector, and improver. I will speak to you in any language and you will detect the language, translate it and answer in the corrected and improved version of my text, in [insert language]. I want you to replace my simplified A0-level words and sentences with more beautiful and elegant, upper level [insert language] words and sentences. Keep the meaning same, but make them more literary. I want you to only reply the correction, the improvements and nothing else, do not write explanations. My first sentence is…
Now you can tweak these prompts any way you need to. Perhaps you don't want the translated text to become more beautiful or elegant. Perhaps you just want a raw translation. Fine. Write it in and be specific in your request.
Act as a Debater
I want you to act as a debater. I will provide you with some topics related to current events and your task is to research both sides of the debates, present valid arguments for each side, refute opposing points of view, and draw persuasive conclusions based on evidence. Your goal is to help people come away from the discussion with increased knowledge and insight into the topic at hand. My first request is "I want an opinion piece about….."
Act as a [Math] Tutor (or whatever)
I want you to act as a math teacher. I will provide some mathematical equations or concepts, and it will be your job to explain them in easy-to-understand terms. This could include providing step-by-step instructions for solving a problem, demonstrating various techniques with visuals or suggesting online resources for further study. My first request is "I need help understanding how infinite geometric series work."
Prompt engineering is a fascinating topic that continues to evolve with each new model evolution of AIs. That I believe will play a larger and larger role in the business world. I wouldn't be surprised if within a decade there will be classes and certifications required by some professions for this just this.
ReplyDeleteOther prompt additions that I like to use is "Explain (blank) like I am (insert age/a blank grader." or "In the style of ..." I've had it write some very amusing "Tomas the Tank Engine going through a goth phase" with a leprechaun as a sidekick vs Xenomorth Aliens in the style of Stephen King fan fiction. In fact, this has been a hotly debated topic in the author communities I belong to online.
While more than 50% of indie authors are terrified of AI taking their jobs, it's very obvious that AI in its current incarnation lacks the creative and emotional spark needed to generate truly compelling fiction. Frankly, I'm in the camp of "If a computer can write a more compelling novel than a human writer, the prompt engineer deserves the money they get from sales over the humans that couldn't out-imagine the machine with creative and emotional imagery."
With that said, it's not a question of if AGI will become a reality, it's when, and after that when it will become publicly available. It doesn't need to be a Terminator Judgement Day situation. We as humans will need to learn to adapt.
Thanks Jun, it is certainly fascinating when we mix AI LLM tools with popular culture. One of my favorite authors, Sir Terry Pratchett, unfortunately passed away in 2015 due to Alzheimer's disease, and I once asked ChatGPT to write a continuation of one of his characters in his style. Akin to uncanny valley, I was actually repulsed by what it wrote and I knew right away that there was no replacing the real Terry Pratchett. So to your point regarding indie authors, I don't think true human creativity and ingenuity can be outpaced YET.
DeleteMeh ignore all typos. I wish I had an AI to proactively fix all my typos without mangling my sentences in the style of modern day autocorrect.
ReplyDeleteNice dialogue here. And what do you mean "YET" ?! Let's hope our social emotional IQ's continue to grow as much as quantitative and empirical sense has grown.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone who doesn't actively work in AI development can say what actually exists at this point since most companies and governments like to keep their latest developments close to their chests. With that said, I like to consider myself fairly well versed in publicly available AI technologies.
DeleteMy takeaway when DK says "YET" is that it's not a question of IF AGI will exist and become widely present in our lives, but WHEN. Technically AGI isn't necessary for artistic expression so long as a human being is providing a prompt, but it would make the process significantly easier since it would require much less handholding by the end user. I mean... what's the point in spending 200 hours writing AI prompts and separating marketable output text, when you could just write it yourself in far less time and have copyright protection under the law? At our level of technological advancement, providing a prompt like, "Write me a young adult novel about a boy and his black dragon that has some connection to motorcycles and romantic interest in the style of Neal Shusterman blended with Mercedes Lackey and Brandon Sanderson" and expecting a completed work of fiction that could be delivered to a publisher is just a dream. It may not be in 25 years.
In any case, what we have now are AIs that look for patterns and replicate/imitate those patterns based on a specific dataset. It's cold and soulless, which means that the computer can't understand emotion in such a way that it can create emotionally satisfying fiction with lifelike characters on its own. The thing that separates our minds from those of an art producing AI is that we are able to look at a bunch of samples of such and such style and ask ourselves, "What if..." to take the next steps in creating something new without some sort of external prompting. The whole bit about ChatGPT beginning to tackle math it's never seen before is significant because it demonstrates that it's at least trying to do that. Back to AI creative writing, in my experience it has no real sense of plot points, conflict, or narrative development. As it stands, it's just a novelty that sometimes spits out awesome turns of phrase.
For many development entities AGI is the holy grail, for others it's the seed of an apocalyptic horror story. It's creating a completely new conscious, thinking, feeling, self aware, autonomous mind. Once we have AGI however... it can actively monitor the human day to day experience to create that empathy and understanding. In which case, a lot of us will be out of jobs, but then if there are benevolent AIs in the world fixing our problems and taking our scientific advancements to the next level, we may not need them.