Are You Struggling with AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to be one of the most impactful developments in history – perhaps since the invention of the printing press. Even now, in its embryonic stage of development, legions of people are turning to it in their everyday lives – even in their personal lives in addition to business and academia.

As with most any technological development, the major challenges surrounding AI involve getting the most out of it and understanding what it can and can’t do, and what its true capabilites are. This may be what leaves many people frustrated and scratching their heads.

Not long ago while listening to a panel discussion on AI, one of the panelists cut through the muck and stated the importance of presenting AI – any AI system from ChatGPT to Perplexity and beyond – with the absolute most descriptive prompt as the key to realizing its maximum power.

Are we having fun yet?

OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman recently told Inc. Magazine that the best way to learn to use AI is to play with it. Test it. Challenge it. Study how it responds. Examine what it tells you – and just as important, pay close attention to what it doesn’t tell you. Brockman added that when it comes to getting the maximum value from AI tools is learning how to talk to, or prompt them for the best results. That should speak volumes.

Brockman has narrowed it down to four main criteria:

State your goal. Your prompt should be precise and descriptive.

Specify your preferred format. Will you be satisfied with a simple list? Do you want any academic citations?

Warnings and guardrails. A common complaint about today’s AI is its ability to spew out unverifiable or unsubstantiated crap. Tell it to be like Sergeant Joe Friday, “Just the facts, maam.”

Context dump. This can be a sort of catch-all. If you’ve done your job with the first three, you can afford to be a littel open-ended here.

Prompts that are too broad or too general will not deliver the results you seek. “What are the main points of the Gettysburg Address?” That’s all well and good, but books have been written on the topic. Chances are a prompt such as that will not present any breakthrough thoughts or anything especially provocative. Are you seeking political points, cultural points, impacts on the war and its combatants?

Think before you ask. It’s somewhat like being confronted with a genie who agrees to grant you one wish. You had better think it through and decide what you want and what’s important to you, or else you’re going to squander any chance you might have had for satisfaction.

Fortunately, with AI you can get a do-over. The genie won’t be that generous. 459

“When you call upon a thoroughbred, he gives you all the speed, strength of heart and sinew in him. When you call on a jackass, he kicks.”

— Patricia Neal, American actress