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What does prompt engineering mean? The term refers to the process of designing input text for AI tools that will generate optimal outputs. Its goal is to increase the accuracy of the responses (or even graphics) produced by the AI. How does it work, and what do you need to know about prompt engineering? Read this article to learn more!
Table of Contents
- What Is Prompt Engineering in AI?
- How Does Prompt Engineering Work?
- Examples of 3 Prompt Engineering Techniques
- What Is the Role of a Prompt Engineer in the Process?
- The Takeaway
What Is Prompt Engineering in AI?
Prompt engineering is the practice of designing prompts—input texts to genAI. This practice aims to enhance the results that you receive when using artificial intelligence.
Thanks to prompt engineering, you can create effective prompts, templates and frameworks that can be used across your entire organisation for a plethora of purposes. This way, all your employees can benefit from the power of AI and use it more effectively.
Prompt engineering is a process, not a task. It is conducted continuously to find new, better solutions. It involves experimenting with potential results, testing them but also analysing data and improving overall business processes.
How Does Prompt Engineering Work?
Prompt engineering is often a long road of trial and error combined with the knowledge of the AI tools you are using. You start from a general prompt, see the results, and… adjust them to receive more accurate results.
Naturally, if you know the AI engine, you can reduce the number of steps in this process. Imagine you want to generate text for your app. You can exclude certain words and phrases to show the direction for the computer program and let it work more efficiently.
Need cutting-edge artificial intelligence for your organisation? Discover our AI Prompter for banks!
Examples of prompt engineering uses may involve:
- Tasking AI with answering a customer’s question based on documents and data sources available within the organisation, such as a knowledge base or an IT system,
- providing AI with specific guidelines for tasks, such as analysing customer data transmitted via API,
- and much more.
Examples of 3 Prompt Engineering Techniques
We’ve explained what prompt engineering is, but did you know that there are different approaches to it? There are several techniques that you can embrace—take a look at some examples below.
Chain-of-Thought Prompting
This technique involves AI breaking down complex questions into smaller bits. Here is an example of such an approach to prompt engineering:
| Q: | What is the impact of ESG investments on the environment? |
| A: |
|
Tree-of-Thought Prompting
The tree-of-thought prompting technique is similar to chain-of-thought with one difference—you ask for an elaboration of each of the parts. Here is an example of this prompt engineering technique:
| Q: | What is the impact of ESG investments on the environment? |
| A: |
|
| Q: | Expand on the impact on climate change. |
Maieutic Prompting
This is an example of prompt-engineering technique where you ask the AI why it gave a particular answer. A conversation might look like this:
| Q: | Why are ESG investments important? |
| A: | ESG investments are key due to their impact on the environment and society. |
| Q: | How do ESG investments impact the environment? |
What Is the Role of a Prompt Engineer in the Process?
A prompt engineer is a new position. It involves implementing the prompt engineering techniques in business. The main scope of a prompt engineer is to:
- create projects of prompts,
- test the prompts,
- upgrade the existing prompts,
- analyse relevant data.
They also look into the business as a whole, mainly to locate tasks and areas that could be empowered by AI within a given company. With this knowledge, they proceed to create solutions, prompts that are aligned with the goals of the business using them and those working with AI in such a business’ structures. Therefore, their work involves strong collaboration with other teams:
- Marketing,
- Sales,
- Customer Service,
- PR,
- Delivery.
To fulfil their role, prompt engineers need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Trends that move at lightning speed. Hence, it is a demanding role, but one crucial for modern businesses.
The Takeaway
What is prompt engineering? It’s the practice of upgrading and polishing your prompts to get better responses from the AI. There are numerous techniques that you can use for its sake, but the goal is always the same: using the power of artificial intelligence to the maximum. If you want to learn more about it, we recommend our ebook: The new reality of a Natural Language Processing Engineer
You might also read: The role of GenAI and ML models in the hyper-personalization of banking services
