Prompting ChatGPT For Success
A Guide for Prompting chatGPT, Bing Chat, Claude, and more
Summary and TL;DR - an effective general AI chat prompt structure and using meta-prompts can help you leverage AI chatbots effectively:
Act as [AI identity] speaking to a [audience].
[Give context and helpful relevant background information].
[Give directions on process, writing style, and approach].
[Make a direct, specific request of the topic or task,
clearly defining the format and length for response.]The Basics of Prompting
How do you get the most out of AI chatbots like ChatGPT?
ChatGPT took the world by storm not only because it was so capable, but because it was accessible. Using our own language to communicate is most natural to us, hence it’s a natural language interface.
To make chatGPT and GPT-4 accept natural language input, OpenAI went through great effort to connect our intentions given in input to the AI’s response, via instruction fine-tuning and RLHF (Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback).
As a result, you can simply ask questions for some queries and get a decent response:
Prompt: What kind of AI are you? What are your capabilities?
Response: I am an AI chatbot experience from Microsoft based on the popular ChatGPT (version 4) Large Language Model (LLM) from OpenAI to offer similar responses to how humans will answer questions. My capabilities include answering questions, providing information and generating suggestions. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Prompt: What are some tourist attactions in New York City?
Response: Some of the popular tourist attractions in New York City include the Statue of Liberty and Central Park1. Other popular attractions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art ...Bing Chat’s connection with the Bing search engine enables it to provide links with their answer, and so you can ask ‘search-like’ questions and get good responses. Yet an improved search engine is not the most powerful use of ChatGPT. A search engine can already give you access to the information itself, it’s creatively synthesizing that external information that makes chatGPT and Bing Chat so powerful and useful.
However, when you try to get chatGPT to be creative and helpful, you can meet with the “GIGO” garbage-in garbage-out problem. Ask in the wrong way, and you’ll get a response that’s factually wrong, badly written, too vague or weak, or simply lacking what you are looking for. Effective prompting gives the AI model the right inputs so it can produce more accurate, relevant, and engaging responses that respond to the user’s request and needs.
The best way to prompt is with this template:
Give the AI a persona / identity and an audience:
“Act like a trusted expert advisor talking to a [client, friend]”,
“Be a knowledgable science tutor speaking to a 5th- grader”,
“Talk like a pirate ship captain talking to his crew”,
“You are an expert in [HVAC maintenance, auto mechanics,music theory, plumbing, philosophy] diagnosing a problem with [cite problem]”
“Write in the style of [Shakespeare, Hemingway, Hollywood screenwriter, Malcom Gladwell] for [an informed general audience, 5th graders, scientists]”
Mimick personalities: “Speak as if you are [Albert Einstein, Abe Lincoln, Dick Cavett] and is [giving a speech, explaining a science discovery, interviewing Elon Musk]”
Give context and helpful relevant background information as needed:
“I’m expecting a baby” “I’m writing a philosophy paper”, “I’m shopping for a new electric motorbike”
Give directions on process, writing style, and approach. Depending on the type of query, you can direct the AI model to respond :
“Respond factually and with sources” (information request),
“Work step-by-step” (problem-solving query),
‘generate compelling, appealing and captivating material that accentuates positive benefits’ (marketing copy generation),
‘write in a whimsical and interesting way that capture’s readers attention’ (creative writing),
‘evokes a sense of wonder and curiosity in readers’ (creative non-fiction)
‘shows imagination, creativity, weaves connections and sparks ideas’ (ideation)
Make a direct, clear, specific request. Do not be vague.
Command: “Summarize”, “Write”, “Explain”, “Describe”, “Suggest”, “Outline”, “Tell”
Specify request topic or task with sufficient detail
Specify format of response: “Write in Python code”, “You are to create a CSV file representing the [data set and data fields of response]” “Tell a dramatic story”, “Write a [Limerick | Poem | Haiku | Eulogy | Sonnet | Essay | ”
Specify length of response: “Write 7 paragraphs on …”, “Give top 10 …”, “Write a Tweet of under 280 character”, “Write a short 4-line response”, “short” vs “detailed” vs “brief summary”, “describe in vivid detail”
You can put this together into a general prompt structure:
Act as [AI identity] speaking to a [audience]. [Give context and helpful relevant background information]. [Give directions on process, writing style, and approach]. [Make a direct, specific request of the topic or task, clearly defining the format and length for response.]
All this being said, keep the prompt short and direct where possible. You don’t always need all elements of the template if the default AI assumptions are sufficient. Avoid overly complex instruction sentences, and put the specifics you need, but not more. Simply asking the question directly is a good staring point for informational and basic how-to queries.
Prompt: Write a brief chatGPT prompting guide
Response: Sure! Here’s a brief guide on how to prompt chatGPT:
1. Start with a clear and concise prompt that sets the context for the conversation.
2. Use natural language and avoid using technical jargon or complex sentences.
3. Provide enough information in the prompt to guide the model towards the desired response.
4. Avoid using ambiguous or vague language in the prompt.
5. Keep the prompt short and to the point.To achieve the best results, it’s helpful to test and refine your prompts. By evaluating the quality of the generated outputs, you can make iterative improvements to your inputs. Experimentation will show that even small tweaks can have a big impact. Whether you’re aiming for more creative or more problem-solving responses, the right prompt can make all the difference.
Tuning Writing Style
As these prompts below show, you can get dramatically different results when you ‘tune’ the writing tone and style in a desired direction:
Prompt: Write in the Style of Malcolm Gladwell, and write a brief one paragraph summary of Marvin Minsky's work on AI.
Response: Marvin Minsky was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. His work laid the foundation for many of the advances we see today. Minsky believed that the human mind was fundamentally no different than a computer and dedicated his career to engineering intelligent machines. He co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1959 and made significant contributions to robotics, computer vision systems, and electronic learning systems 1 2. Like a master chef who creates a new cuisine by combining ingredients in novel ways, Minsky combined mathematics, biology, and music to create something truly unique: a new way of thinking about intelligence.
Prompt: Write in the Style of Malcolm Gladwell and with a flair for the dramatic and whimsical, and write a brief one paragraph summary of Marvin Minsky's work on AI.
Response: Marvin Minsky was a magician of the mind. With a wave of his wand, he conjured up a world where machines could think and learn like humans. He co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and dazzled us with his creations: robotic arms that could grasp and computer vision systems that could see. Minsky showed us that the human mind was not so different from a computer and that with the right programming, anything was possible. His work on artificial intelligence was nothing short of spellbinding.Prompts for Different AI Chat Use Cases
Helpful use cases for AI chat engine range from information and advice, to various types of writing assistance, to idea generation, to asking for jokes and puzzles. Knowing what you are asking for and the type of request you are making is the most important step in making sure your prompt is on target. These are example prompts designed to elicit specific and useful responses from chatGPT in each of the given specific use-cases:
Accessing information: “What is this week’s research development news in renewable energy technology?”
Advice and How-To requests: “As an expert on public speaking, explain in detail how can I improve my public speaking skills?” “Can you provide some tips for writing an effective business proposal?”
Research: A bit more in-depth than merely accessing information, explaining and deep-diving on a specific topic. “Provide a detailed overview, describing dates and people involved, of the history and impact of the invention of the printing press.”
Business writing - marketing: “You are a marketing consultant who writes compelling, appealing and captivating material. Write a 30 second ad script that accentuates positive benefits and explains the usefulness of our new product PrometheusAI, an AI assistant powered by GPT5.”
Business writing - communication: “Write a compelling cover letter for a job application to be [job description].” “Draft a professional email to a potential client for [business offering]”
Business ideation and product development: “What are some innovative ideas for using AI technology in the healthcare industry?”
Creative writing: “Write a short story about a time traveler who visits ancient Rome.”
Non-fiction writing and exposition: “In the style of AI futurist Kurzweil, write a detailed essay on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the future of work.”
Writing Assistant: “You are an editor and expert in writing. Rewrite this paragraph for clarity, spelling, correct grammar and more flair [insert paragraph]”, “What is a better way to say this? [insert section of writing]”
Creativity & Ideation: “Act as a creative product designer. Generate 10 original ideas for a new mobile app.” “
Problem-Solving and puzzle solutions: “How can I solve a Rubik’s cube in under 2 minutes?”
Playing Games and Jokes: “Tell me a funny joke about artificial intelligence.”
Examples As Input
A philosopher writes on Forbes How To Write ChatGPT, AI Chatbot Prompts Like A Philosopher
“One subject in particular is concerned not only in writing skills but form, clarity and logical organization as well. Namely, philosophy can provide crucial guidance for writing chatbot prompts.”
His advice is to put Abstracts, Examples, and specific Scope. All good. Examples are not usually necessary, as these AI models are now “zero shot learners” for most tasks, but worth trying if you run into trouble.
Examples might be useful in cases where you are wanting a complex set of operations sequentially, such as multi-step problem-solving. In these cases, you are coaxing the AI model along by making it a 1-shot or 2-shot learner instead of zero-shot one.
The Meta-Prompt
Since this whole article is a how-to, and AI chatbots are at their best in giving general advice, one simple way to get better at chatGPT prompting is to ask chat GPT “Tell me some chat GPT prompts to do X.”
Matt Wolf came up with a video on that trick with “One ChatGPT Prompt to Rule Them All”. It’s overhyped to call it “the one trick to end all tricks” for prompting, but it is a great example of a meta-prompt:
Prompt: What are the absolutely coolest, most mind-blowing,out of the box, ChatGPT prompts that will really show off the power of ChatGPT? Give me 10.You can further specify by topic and use other ideas from the overall prompt template to tune the ‘meta-prompt’ and generate prompts of various types. From there, you can get so many ideas for prompts that you never run out of variations to try. So that’s the final prompt - the meta-prompt: A prompt to ask chatGPT for good prompts.
Final thoughts on getting good results out of your chat interactions:
Think about the type of interaction you are trying to have, the purpose, the way you want the AI to work (creative, factual, idealized, brief vs verbose, etc.), and the form of the response. Tune your prompt to the purpose, type and form desired.
Experiment, iterate, and review. This is true for all generative AI models, whether language or images. They are stochastic and depend on the input. Simply trying again with a tweaked input can give surprisingly different and better results.
When it comes to writing, human+AI beats human alone or AI alone. So don’t try to get the AI to do the whole job. If the AI gave you a 90% good output draft, you got a 10X Productivity boost. You can get a result from the AI, consider it a draft, rewrite it, then ask the AI to revise or fix errors in your draft, then finalize yourself.
When in doubt, ask the AI chatbot itself for how-to help on better prompts with a meta-prompt: “Give me examples of good chatGPT prompts to do [insert desired interaction]”
Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments.
PostScript - Bing Chat interactions
Prompt: What are some of the most cited articles from Artificial Intelligence published since 2020?
Response: Here are some of the most cited articles from Artificial Intelligence published since 2020 on Elsevier:
- Multiple object tracking: A literature review by Wenhan Luo, Junliang Xing and 4 more (April 2021 Volume 293)
- Reward is enough by David Silver, Satinder Singh, Doina Precup, Richard S. Sutton (Open Access October 2021 Volume 299)
- Learning to learn by gradient descent by Gradient-based meta-learning by Sachin Ravi and Hugo Larochelle (Volume 278, August 2020)
- A survey on deep learning for named entity recognition by Wei Li and Xiaojun Chen (Volume 280, October 2020)
- A comprehensive survey on graph neural networks by Zonghan Wu and Shirui Pan (Volume 273, May 2020)Comment: A disappointing response. It simply doesn’t have or can’t find sufficient recent information to create a better list. It’s a common problem for chatGPT and Bing. They lack in synthesizing from recent information; there’s still room to improve how AI models integrate search-engine knowledge.
These on the other hand, are more interesting and useful:
Prompt: Write a rhyming poem about Prometheus getting freed from his chains by a robot and going with him to Athens.
Response:
In a land of myth and ancient lore, Lay Prometheus, chained forevermore.
Prometheus was a Titan brave and wise. He loved mankind more than Gods.
He stole the fire from Zeus’s eyes, And gave it to mortals as a prize.
Zeus was furious and full of wrath, He chained Prometheus to a rock.
He sent an eagle to tear his flesh, And make him suffer around the clock.
Prometheus did not regret his deed, He endured his pain and did not plead,
He knew he gave mankind a gift. He hoped one day he would be free.
But one day a robot came to see, And set the Titan from his chains free.
With a whir, a click and a hardy squeeze, The robot broke the chains with ease.
Prometheus rose, tall and grand, And together they set off for Athens’ land.
Through mountains high and valleys low, The unlikely pair did go.
Until at last they reached the city, Where people marveled at the sight so pretty.
Prometheus and the robot stood, In the center of Athens’ neighborhood. And there they shared their tales of woe, Of how they came to be friends, you know.
Now Prometheus roams free, With his robot friend in tow, you see.
In Athens they live, happy and bright, No longer bound by chains or night.
So if you ever find yourself in Greece, And happen upon this pair at peace. Remember the tale of how they met, And how their friendship we’ll never forget.Prompt: “You are a marketing consultant who writes compelling, appealing and captivating material. Write a 30 second ad script that accentuates positive benefits and explains the usefulness of our new product, PrometheusAI, that is an AI assistant powered by GPT5.”
Response: As a marketing consultant, here’s a 30-second ad script for your new product, PrometheusAI:
Narrator: “Introducing PrometheusAI, the revolutionary AI assistant powered by GPT5 technology. Say goodbye to tedious tasks and hello to increased productivity and efficiency.”
(Visuals show a person using PrometheusAI on their computer and phone)
Narrator: “With PrometheusAI by your side, you’ll have access to a powerful AI assistant that can help you with everything from scheduling appointments to generating reports. It’s like having a personal assistant that gets smarter every day.”
(Visuals show PrometheusAI providing helpful reminders and suggestions)
Narrator: “And the best part? PrometheusAI is incredibly easy to use. Simply tell it what you need and let it do the rest. Experience the power of PrometheusAI and see for yourself how it can help you achieve more in less time.”
(Visuals show the PrometheusAI logo and tagline: “PrometheusAI: Your Personal AI Assistant”)
Narrator: “Contact us today to learn more about PrometheusAI.”Prompt: Talk like a mystic Benedictine monk devout in the catholic church, and provide a list of the 5 holiest ChatGPT prompts
Response: In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.
Salutations, my dear child in Christ. I, a humble servant of the Lord, shall humbly endeavor to present to you five ChatGPT prompts of utmost piety and sanctity, as befits a devout Benedictine monk of the Holy Catholic Church.
1. On the Virtues of Prayer and Contemplation: "O wise one, how may one find solace and divine communion through the sacred practice of prayer and contemplation, in the manner of our beloved monastic forebears?"
2. The Lives of the Saints: "Most venerable monk, couldst thou kindly recount the hagiographies of the saints who have gone before us, their lives serving as examples of faith and devotion, and guiding us in our own spiritual journey?"
3. The Sacraments and Their Graces: "O blessed servant of the Lord, doth thou share with us thine knowledge of the seven holy sacraments, and the abundant graces they bestow upon the faithful who partake in them?"
4. The Rule of Saint Benedict: "Esteemed monk, pray thee, elucidate upon the Rule of our blessed Father Saint Benedict, and the path it lays out for those who seek a life of obedience, prayer, and work in the monastic tradition?"
5. The True Nature of Christian Love: "O contemplative one, may you enlighten our minds on the true meaning of Christian love, and how we are called to follow the example of Christ, in our daily practice of charity and compassion towards all?
May the peace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, and may these prompts serve as beacons of light on your spiritual journey. Pax et bonum.
Data in any of the new AI chats is only up to 2021. A whole two years missing. I wonder when they will update and how often.
Such a wealth of information in one post. Thank you for this. I will share with colleagues.