[dlevine]

My theory is that, when done properly, it’s much closer to science than engineering.

And by “done properly,” i mean done in a regimented way with evals to verify that a wide range of inputs produce the desired outputs.

Prompting is much closer to discovering the properties of an already existing system than building something using engineering methods.

[NotAnOtter]

My definition of science is something like "a methodical approach to reach some truth" whereas engineering is something like "a methodical approach to reach some functionality". And I think some version of that is pretty universally accepted.

So by that definition, prompt engineering is much closer to engineering than science. That said, I would consider it closer to product development than either of the above two; I don't count 'tell an llm you'll torture it until your website is hopefully less buggy' a methodical approach.

[ankit219]

"Done properly" anything can be science/engineering. Just make a process, give it a KPI on how well it's performing, and you have an engineering. Movie making done properly is where audience is engaged with every act, you test screen it, see audience reaction, tweak, have a specific set of evals, and then you have something scoring high on the metrics. Part of that happens today, but you would not call that science. It's not what people mean when they call something as science or engineering. Your's is too broad of a definition to mean anything specific.