prompt engineering

In all the discussions about chatbots recently people jumped lightly over the requirement to build a set of texts and instructions that the chatbot can use to decide what to write and how to write, to give it both content and style.  This is crucial in getting a good output.  This is now referred to as prompt engineering, that is, designing what will prompt the chatbot to produce good output.  There is a skill in doing this so it may be that being a prompt engineer is a job of the future.

Initially the prompt is akin to the brief you might write for a freelance writer.  You say how long the text should be, what ideas or information it should cover, and who the intended audience is. Then you might include a list of words that should be in it, especially if the piece is in a special context where a certain amount of jargon will help to make it convincing.  If you are writing in a specialist area but for a general audience these might be the words that you want to avoid.

The main focus of prompt engineers at the moment is the testing of chatbots.  They throw prompt after prompt at the chatbot and check out the answers.  If the answer is weird they try to work out what has gone wrong. Apparently chatbots have been known to profess love for their user as a response.  This is a disturbing reply for someone who has asked where the best sausages are made.