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What is Prompt Engineering?

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Behind every amazing AI application are meticulously engineered prompts. Prompts act as the instructions that guide AI systems like ChatGPT on how to respond intelligently.

Well-designed prompts are crucial for building AI solutions that deliver real business value. Bad prompts can lead to unpredictable or even harmful AI behavior.

With Prompt Engineering, you can amplify accuracy, reduce harmful content, and customize AI capabilities tailored to your needs - all through carefully crafted prompts.

At Hyperleap AI, based on our extensive experience crafting world-class prompts, we have designed the 6 Cs approach to Prompt Engineering.

  • Clarity A good prompt should be unambiguous and clear in its instructions as to what it is looking to get done.

  • Contextual awareness Context is important so that AI can interpret a task the way you want it to. Improper context might lead the model to take a different context than what you anticipated it to.

  • Complete, yet Concise Prompts need to be complete. If you want the output to be structured a certain way, say so without leaving it to chance. Guardrail the prompt with several instructions on what it's allowed and not allowed to do.

  • Continuous Improvement A good prompt keeps evolving based on real-world feedback and iterations in your playground. To extract great value from LLMs, you'll need great prompts, not lousy ones. But even if you stared with a lousy prompt, you could iterate and get to a great one.

  • Continuous Learning This one's not for the LLMs, but for you, the Prompt Engineer. Prompt Engineering is an evolving field, and new research is emerging every single day on how to structure prompts better or use newer techniques. If you're not learning, you are falling behind. Subscribe to our Substack, and you'll hear from us periodically on any major improvements in this space.

  • Control - As you integrate the prompts into your day-to-day work and business apps, it is extremely important that you have full control and visibility over how they are acting. Hyperleap AI comprehensive suite of features such as Workspaces, Prompt Configurations, or Audit Logging helps you achieve that with ease.

Expert prompt engineering unlocks the true potential of AI. It is the difference between just using AI versus deeply integrating it into your business.

For instance, here's a small example of what it takes to create a sentiment analyzer. There's a bad and, there's a good prompt:

Bad Prompt:

Determine the mood of the text, "I am having an amazing day!"


Prompt output: 

The mood of the text, "I am having an amazing day!" is generally positive and enthusiastic. The word 
"amazing" conveys a high level of enjoyment or excitement, indicating a positive emotion or mood from
the speaker.

In this example, the instruction is vague and does not provide a clear guideline on how the sentiment should be categorized (e.g., positive, negative, neutral, or on a numerical scale). This could lead to inconsistent or inaccurate sentiment analysis results.

Good Prompt:

Classify the sentiment of the text delimited by triple backticks into one of positive, negative, 
or neutral, and return a valid json with "result" as the key.

```I am having a amazing day!```
Prompt output:

{
  "result": "positive"
}

In the good prompt example, the instruction is precise and provides a clear guideline on how the sentiment should be categorized, and the output structured. It also gives out a JSON, which makes it easy to incorporate into any business application.

If you are looking to hone your Prompt Engineering skills, we highly recommend taking Andrew Ng's free course.

👉 ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers

https://www.deeplearning.ai/short-courses/chatgpt-prompt-engineering-for-developers/

This course covers best practices for prompt design, safety techniques, controlled generation methods and more. A must-watch for anyone working with AI assistants!

Remember, behind every great AI application is meticulously engineered prompts. Master prompt engineering to create AI solutions that are safe, effective and aligned to your business needs.

Updated 8 months ago

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