Generative AI : Using Generative AI Effectively

Effective Prompting

Ethan Mollick, Wharton School Professor and generative AI advocate offers the following general prompting advice:

• Prompting has a major impact on quality of output.
• Don’t rely on “magic” words or phrases (e.g., offering rewards to the AI for doing something well, telling it to take a deep breath before responding, being polite).
• Becoming really good at prompting is a waste of time.

Mollick offers three strategies that he has found consistently lead to good results: 

1. Add context. For instance, 
   • assign a persona (e.g., “you are a brilliant astrophysicist who is experienced at teaching complex theories to the public,”)
   • assign an audience (e.g., “you are speaking to a client”)
   • assign an output format (e.g., “set of  bullet points,” “friendly email”)
2. Include “few shot” prompts – provide examples of the kind of output that you want
3. Include “chain of thought” prompts – ask the AI to complete instructions step-by-step (“First, outline the results; then produce a draft; then revise the draft; finally, produced a polished output”)