Stop talking about ChatGPT, start talking to it

Instructing ChatGPT, or prompting, is a basic skill as essential as reading and writing, AI adviser and trainer Tim Goudriaan argues today in the Dutch national newspaper Trouw.

13 May 2023

In recent months, the media has often discussed ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can answer the most varied questions in no time. The emphasis is often on ChatGPT’s limitations, but those have less to do with the technology than with a lack of skill in prompting: asking ChatGPT good questions.

Tim Goudriaan

Founder, AI Advice & Training

What is prompting?

To prepare ourselves for the major technical developments already lined up for this year, we need to start seeing prompting as a new basic skill.

You may think: anyone who can ask questions can prompt. But good prompting, asking questions and giving instructions to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, is both an art and a science. Let me illustrate this with two examples.

A prompt such as “write a text about ChatGPT and education” will produce a general text with a random focus. But a prompt made up of a specific assignment with concrete instructions, such as “Write a five-week lesson plan in table format for my history class in the fourth year of senior general secondary school (HAVO 4, students aged around 15 to 16), covering the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Suggest themes, concepts, interactive group work formats and discussion questions for each week”, will produce a more specific, concrete and therefore more useful result.

Prompting can give you useful “answers” in the form of project proposals, sales copy and social media campaigns, or other “products” such as Excel sheets and PowerPoint presentations.

ChatGPT speaks every language

Prompting belongs in the same list as reading, writing and, perhaps, programming. What these basic skills have in common is that they are all communication skills, but the form differs. Reading is about gathering knowledge and interpreting text, while writing is about recording and conveying information.

Programming and prompting, on the other hand, consist mainly of an interactive “dialogue” with a computer, the first using a programming language and the second human language. That is why follow-up questions matter: “Rewrite my lesson plan in English”, for example, will translate the answer to your earlier prompt.

So prompting draws on both your reading and your writing skills, in a way programmers will recognise. ChatGPT also answers just as easily in Dutch and Japanese as in programming languages such as Python, HTML and JavaScript.

In short: the better you can read, write and program, the better you can prompt, and vice versa. This skill draws on an understanding of language, context and nuance. It requires precision, quick thinking and solution-oriented communication. Put differently: with good prompting you can achieve a quantitative and qualitative increase in scale that Johannes Gutenberg and Steve Jobs would envy.

AI is going to change the world

The impact of these developments seems to have reached many sectors only to a limited extent. Elon Musk and thousands of others are not calling for an immediate pause in AI development for nothing. The AI releases planned for this year alone are about to change the world beyond recognition.

To keep up with these developments, it is crucial that we embrace prompting as quickly as possible. The future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed yet. So train your staff, teach your pupils and students. Do not wait until the autumn.

The coming months are a rare and unique moment in history, in which skilled prompters can benefit from hugely impressive technological leaps forward.

Getting started

Want your team to learn how to prompt? Take a look at our practical AI training courses or get advice through our AI consulting for organisations.