How to Talk to AI - 5 Essential Tips for Better Chats

Evergreen Tips & Tricks

..to 10x Your Conversations With Ai

How to refine the problem? (eg. when working with #ai) 1. give context (optional), 2. ask for assumptions you may not know about the problem, 3. ask to use 5whys to explain those assumptions, 4. ask for alternatives to the problem (eg. what do you think are alternatives I could have missed when defining responsibilities of SEM role)

Don't start any conversation without giving AI a ton of context first. (Be intentional about it)

How to Talk to AI

Use the following phrases to increase the quality of the #ai output:

Be 100 times more specific ^[1]
Be 20% more creative
Explain this to me, as I would be 10 years old
Think step by step, explain your reasoning
self-critique
- can you go and check your response? / how can it be improved? ...great, now go and implement it ^[2]
few shots prompting
- Provide several examples of desired behavior or output (e.g., “paste them into the model ... write me another email ... style it like my previous emails”)
task decomposition:
- break this problem into small steps / sub-problems
- don't need to be sequential → if you want to group similar ideas from the text together, inspiration
Content Creation:
- Write like a human. No fluff. No cringe. Tiny typos, and grammar issues. Make it hit.
Building projects - designing
- use ASCII wireframes for layout to confirm before creating design → create ascii representation of the layout you are about to use ^[3]
Brainstorming (refining problem…)
- what do other people say online about this?
- what else should I know? ^[4]
Be concise when writing (use minimal words to deliver the message) → avoiding #ai fluff

Just remember that you get out what you put in, so the more effort you put into your prompts, the more you'll get out of the LLM. If you ask a simple question, you'll get a simple answer. If you ask a complex question, you'll get a complex answer.

This article was originally published on https://craftengineer.com/. It was written by a human and polished using grammar tools for clarity.

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