[WFHRenaissance]

>>> When users cannot predict how input controls affect outputs they have to resort to trial-and-error, which is frustrating. This is a major issue when using generative AI for creating new content and it will remain an issue as long as the mapping between the input controls and outputs is unclear. But we can improve AI interfaces by enabling conversational interactions that can let users establish common ground/shared semantics with the AI, and that provide repair mechanisms when such shared semantics are missing.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reasoning for working on your prompt engineering.

The prompt is the interface. Prompting is a communication skill, a management skill, and a technical skill.

I doubt many will be hired as a "prompt engineers" in coming years (some already have been, by idiotic corps) - but being a bad prompt engineer will be a noticeable lack.

Start practicing.

[kevingadd]

Are you saying that a "good prompt" has the same properties no matter what network you're feeding it to? If so, why? It seems to me that writing a good prompt would require an understanding of the nature of the network you're using, at a minimum - for example "trending on artstation" is common in image generation prompts, and that's not going to be very useful input when generating text for a blog post.

If not, what is the specific thing people should be practicing right now?

[chewxy]

Sooner or later we'd have to be more and more precise with prompts. We'd be going from "I want a function that takes anything and returns itself" to "I : a -> a" ... and hey that looks like a programming language

[klyrs]

> "I want a function that takes anything and returns itself"

Sounds like you're looking for a function "I : a -> I". Precision really seems important. Programming in English is like being granted wishes from a djinn. You'll get what you asked for, but beware. But currently you don't even get that.

[stale2002]

It seems like the hottest new programming language is the English language.

[IanCal]

> doubt many will be hired as a "prompt engineers" in coming years (some already have been, by idiotic corps

If it's useful now it's not idiotic for a company to hire for people good at solving their problems.

[WFHRenaissance]

> If it's useful now

It's not :) - they're hype-hiring.

[sshumaker]

This is really a lot less necessary with GPT-4. What required careful prompting in 3.5 often you can give it something slapdash in 4 and it can do a great job figuring out intent.