TITLE: Prompting AI Generators Is Like Prompting Students
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 18, 2023  2:46 PM
DESC: The advice for creating good prompts to ChatGPT and its ilk sounds familiar.  The same advice applies when prompting students.
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BODY:
 Ethan Mollick tells us
<a href="https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-boost-your">
   how to generate prompts</a>
 for programs like ChatGPT and DALL-E: give direct and detailed
 instructions.

<blockquote><em>
 Don't ask it to <b>write an essay about how human error causes
 catastrophes</b>.  The AI will come up with a boring and
 straightforward piece that does the minimum possible to satisfy
 your simple demand.  Instead, remember you are the expert and
 the AI is a tool to help you write.  You should push it in the
 direction you want.  For example, provide clear bullet points
 to your argument: <b>write an essay with the following points:
 -Humans are prone to error -Most errors are not that important
 -In complex systems, some errors are catastrophic -Catastrophes
 cannot be avoided</b>
</em></blockquote>

 But even the results from such a prompt are much less interesting
 than if we give a more explicit prompt.  Fo instance, we might add:
<blockquote><em>
 use an academic tone. use at least one clear example. make it
 concise. write for a well-informed audience. use a style like the
 New Yorker. make it at least 7 paragraphs. vary the language in
 each one. end with an ominous note.
</em></blockquote>

 This reminds me of setting essay topics for students, either for
 long-form writing or for exams.  If you give a bland uninteresting
 question, you will generally get a bland uninteresting answer.
 Such essays are hard to evaluate.  A squooshy question allows the
 student to write almost anything in response.  Students are
 usually unhappy in this scenario, too, because they don't know
 what you want them to write, or how they will be evaluated.

 Asking a human a more specific question has downsides, though.
 It increases the cognitive load placed on them, because there are
 more things for them to be thinking about as they write.  Is my
 tone right?  Does this sound like the <em>New Yorker</em>?  Did I
 produce the correct number of paragraphs?  Is my essay factually
 accurate?  (ChatGPT doesn't seem to worry about this one...)
 
 The tradeoff is clearer expectations.  Many students prefer this
 trade, at least on longer form assignments when they have time to
 consider the specific requests.  A good spec reduces uncertainty.

 Maybe these AI programs are closer to human than we think after
 all.  (Some people don't worry much about correctness either.)

 ~~~~

 On a related note:  As I
<a href="https://mastodon.social/@wallingf/109705477639900439">
   wrote elsewhere</a>,
 I refuse to call ChatGPT or any program "an AI".  The phrase
 "artificial intelligence" is not a term for a specific agent; it
 is the name of an idea.  Besides, none of these programs are I yet,
 only A.
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