PROMPT
the GENIE
We evolved from storing some information in our brains and books to storing all of it in a cloud. Artificial intelligence helps us organize and understand this data in many wondrous ways, but retrieving and using it requires a meticulously crafted prompt.
As of 2023, AI doesn’t have a purpose, and it doesn’t know what you’re trying to achieve. To get specific results, you need to define and communicate the desired outcome. The specificity of the explanation determines the accuracy of the outcome.
Before the advent of mainstream AI, I had my own version of an all-knowing being that complied with my requests, but only if he understood them.
THE GENIE
Imagine walking on the beach and spotting a corked bottle washing ashore. You pick it up and brush it off the sand to find strange writing on the front. Unable to resist your growing curiosity, you uncork the bottle, releasing a cloud of smoke that materializes into a 10-foot genie. He introduces himself and grants you three wishes as a token of gratitude for his early release after millennia in captivity. But he would fulfill these wishes only if you could describe each one in a clear, detailed, and understandable way. The genie was stuck in a bottle for thousands of years, so he doesn’t understand wishes without context. If you want to use your wish to solve a problem, you’ll need to define the problem and the required solution in detail.
Locked away for millennia
Wishing to “be rich”, for example, is meaningless to the genie. What’s rich without the context of currency and markets? $100k for a homeless Bangladeshi is unimaginable riches, while even a hundred million won’t make Bill Gates wealthy (because he already is). And that’s only one currency and one way to be rich. So if your goal is to become wealthy, you’ll have to define exactly what that means to you (how much, in what currency, when, etc.).
By the time I was done formulating my wishes, I could clearly see the problem and even gain insight into the solution.
“A Problem Well Stated is Half Solved.”
— Charles Kettering, American inventor
The same principles apply to prompting AI. A prompt is a set of instructions that describe the expected outcome and determine the result.
AI’s ability to understand our intent improves every day. Similarly to early computers or the early internet, prompting will become easier, more efficient, and more pleasant to use over time. Eventually, neuroscience will enable us to tap directly into the mind in order to “verbalize” our wishes without saying them, but until then, “talking to AI” is in the domain of the prompt.
WISH
AI has access to a lot of information, and it’s an extremely useful assistant if you know how to get what you want. A helpful hand and a wealth of knowledge are a prompt away. It’s as if my genie came to life.
You can wish for whatever you want, but the outcome of the wish will depend on how you phrase it.
What is your wish?
A good prompter borrows the diligence of a lawyer, the meticulousness of an engineer, and the stubbornness of a child stuck in an endless “but why?” cycle.
Good luck prompting!
Sean A. Cooper
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