We’re presented with endless prompt guides and chatbot hacks every day on social media but most are overlooking some fundamental realities of the technology and its use for work. Here are 5 quick bits of advice on getting more from chatbots and large language models (LLMs) and how you should view them.
1. Have conversations
The clue is in the name “chatbot”. It’s not a search engine. You will get much more value by seeing them as collaborators to have productive conversations with than simply asking them to have a go at answering a question or completing a task. We all have a muse now.
2. It’s more about you than the AI
The quality of those conversations is down to you. The more you know, the better you understand your subject, the better you are at writing clearly and so on – the better the results of your interactions will be. Develop yourself and the power of AI will multiply you.
3. Don’t worry about learning prompts for tasks
There are loads of suggested prompts for tasks and advice on mastering them. There’s only short-term value in these because very soon the apps we use will have AI baked in and they will ask us to take on our work. All that prompting knowledge will be built into the tools to optimize our use of the software. Best to learn something more fundamental instead.
4. They are reasoning machines
They are much more than copywriting machines. Their real skill is the application of logic, probability and reasoning. They’ll help you work stuff out. Some AIs are already using software tools themselves to help even more. Explore your challenges with one and get problem-solving.
5. AI literacy is now an essential skill
The power and potential of AI is hard to understate. Knowledge and mastery of it is going to put you in a better career position than if you just dabble. Passive use will provide you will lots of benefits, sure but active literacy will be the key to genuine progress in your job.
For a more in-depth examination of all this, you could watch my webinar on it here or get in touch via the big group website.
Article written by Paul North, Head of AI at big group.