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Basic Prompting

Prompting is writing (and often long-form writing, see Deep-Research Prompts). Here are some useful general ideas to keep in mind:

Prompting is Weird: Being polite has no consistent effect, but ocassionally, the offer of chocolate can make a difference. Strange, but in general, longer prompts with more details or steps help.

Demand More: While AI often responds like a human, it does not feel emotion, and it does not get tired. You can now be as exhaustive and pedantic as you like. Require AI to triple check everything. Your regular practice should be to ask for more than you need: 40 instead of 4. 

Converse: For many situations (like brainstorming), it is better to just start and then refine. Sometimes just asking “what do you think of this?” can be enough to start a conversation. 

Iterate: You should rarely accept the first answer. Refine or ask AI to start over. AI can often help: ask “what might be missing,” “is there anything else you need to know to make this better?” or “list the evidence for and against each claim, with links to original sources.” Mike Caulfield has developed a great list of Effective Follow-up Prompts to check the veracity of claims!

Provide Context: LLMs are language models, so they respond like a smart but naïve intern. The more literal you can be about your instructions, goals, audience, and output the better.

Specify Expertise: The easiest way to improve responses is to ask AI to response as an expert: “you are a kind, rigorous, and experienced professor of [your discipline] with 40 years of teaching experience.” More is better: “and you have a deep understanding of pedagogical best practice.”

Branching: The big three also allow for “branching:” Use the arrows to take the conversation in multiple directions at once.

Search for Ideas: You are used to searching for combinations of words, but AI can look for similarities, patterns, trends, and concepts at a scale humans cannot. You can search for something “like this” or ask if anyone has ever tried a “similar” experiment. (More here.)

Ask for Insight: AI does not feel, but it can mimic emotions, provide insight, or emotional understanding in remarkable ways. Ask it to “show thinking” can also be useful for figuring out what went wrong.

GETTING STARTED

INCREASING DIVERSITY & CREATIVITY OF RESPONSES

ANALYZING PATTERNS

ITERATION

EXAMPLE GENERATOR — GETTING UNSTUCK

COMMUNICATING and RELATIONSHIPS

ROLE PLAYING and EMPATHY INTERVIEWS

DESIGN THINKING

AI for NUDGING Student Success

PROMPTING as WRITING

Write a prompt to produce a story that will demonstrates a point or explore an issue that matters deeply to you. You will need to specify the themes you wish to explore as well as the type of story, the set-up, the level of intensity, the audience and the style. (You might suggest specific authors and other stories as examples.) Design a main character and some plot lines you wish to explore. You should also write the opening sentence or situation. You want to control as many variables as you can to create the output you want. This prompt will be long as YOU explore the ideas. RESIST the urge to write a short prompt and then see what happens—(1) because the response is going to be very long and (2) because THINKING about all of the pieces is a very useful human skill you want to develop. The learning happens  as you learn to anticipate what is needed.

Example: You are the highly acclaimed and wildly inventive Scottish author Iain Banks who also wrote science fiction under the name Iain M Banks. Your many novels include a series about The Culture, a group of humans living in the far future in a society run largely by artificial intelligence.

Write a short story that has dramatic intensity and explores some of the same themes, but set in the very near future (the year 2060).  In this future Earth, cars are now all self-driving, and indeed our main character works for what was formerly Tesla but is now a division of General Motors. (Tesla was merged with Buick.) Car AIs now always talk to each other and there are virtually no accidents, and younger people have largely accepted this.

Our main character is named Jalil. He is 35 years old and likeable, but a little selfish and still single. His mother is from Scotland and his father from Jamaica but he lives in Austin, Texas, where the old Tesla was headquartered. His relationships with his family should also reflect the conflicts over views on AI: like the general population, his family has very different feelings about self-driving cars and what they mean for humanity. These opinions are grounded in different world views and how they look for different evidence in the world. The story should explore this and use it as a way to illuminate how society might react more broadly.

The plot revolves around Jalil’s initially innocent plan to over-ride his car’s AI to allow it to move more quickly around the city.  He has to use his job to do this. The story opens with his frustration as he is late for work (again). He realizes that since the movement of cars on city streets is now organized for the collective good and safety of everyone, he often has to wait because there, for example a greater volume of cars in cross traffic.

The story should explore the havoc his intervention causes (unintentionally) both in systems and in the human reactions.  Illuminate how different humans struggle with the role of AI and the real problems this might cause or solve. How might AI help and support SOME humans (like providing the elderly with companionship) but how might it isolate others (like Jalil)  from better relationships. Invent circumstances and plot twists that make this a compelling story on its own merit. It should be interesting and literary as a story, but also use this moving narrative as a chance to create situation that will bring the conflicts over AI in society to the fore.

The ending should be gripping and surprising.

It should be no more than 3000 words.