Experiments with chatbots produce some promising prompts

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Chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard offer non-AI experts a chance to experiment with artificial intelligence—for fun and for personal and professional tasks. Users write “prompts” that tell the chatbot what to do or create.  But remember: The results produced by chatbots are not always accurate. AI experts warn against using anything produced by a chatbot without verifying the results.

IBJ asked Perplexity AI (which is based on OpenAI GPT-3 and GPT-4) to help us write effective chatbot prompts.

IBJ’s prompt: Give me tips for writing effective prompts for Perplexity.

Be clear and specific: Use short sentences that are easy to understand and ask specific questions that explain the context of the question.

Avoid long sentences with many subpoints: Keep your prompts concise and to the point.

Provide background information: Assume little shared background knowledge and provide enough information for Perplexity to understand the context of the question.

Use precise language: Choose fitting words and construct purposeful sentences to produce low perplexity content.

Try different prompt styles: Experiment with different prompt styles and approaches to determine the most effective phrasing, tone, and complexity.

Prime the AI: Provide some initial information or context to help guide Perplexity’s response.

IBJ asked Bard—a chatbot developed by Google—for sample prompts that could be used to try the technology.

IBJ’s prompt: Give me an example of prompts to help me experiment with Bard.

Write me a poem about love.

Generate a code in Python to calculate the Fibonacci sequence.

Write a script for a short movie about a robot that falls in love with a human.

Translate this paragraph from English to Spanish.

Summarize the main points of this article about artificial intelligence.

Write a blog post about the benefits of using Google Bard.

Create a presentation about the history of artificial intelligence.

Write a song about the future of technology.

Come up with a new marketing campaign for a product.

Design a new logo for a company.

Write a letter to your future self.

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