Prompts and Prompt Engineering

Prompts are the instructions, questions, or inputs we give to AI systems to guide their responses. Effective prompting is crucial for getting high-quality, relevant outputs from AI tools like ChatGPT.

Key Principles

Clarity and Specificity

• Be explicit about what you want
• Provide context and constraints
• Specify the format or style of response

Iterative Refinement

• Start with a basic prompt and refine based on outputs
• Learn from what works and what doesn’t
• Build a personal library of effective prompt patterns

As AI systems develop more sophisticated reasoning capabilities, as demonstrated by Wei et al. 2022🎓, effective prompting becomes even more important for unlocking these emergent abilities.

Role and Perspective

• Assign the AI a specific role or expertise area
• Frame questions from particular perspectives
• Use examples to demonstrate desired output style

Educational Applications

In education, good prompting helps students:

• Ask better questions of AI systems
• Get more useful learning support
• Develop critical thinking about AI responses
• Understand the importance of clear communication

The Socratic Method

The best educational prompts often follow Socratic principles - asking questions that lead students to discover insights rather than simply providing answers.

Examples of Socratic AI prompts:

• “What questions should I be asking about this topic?”
• “What assumptions am I making here?”
• “How might someone disagree with this perspective?”

This approach helps ensure AI enhances rather than replaces human thinking, leading to human-plus outputs that combine the best of human creativity with AI capability.