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Generative AI: Basics for Faculty

What is a Prompt?

Prompts guide AI toward what you want it to produce. It’s important that your prompt not be too vague or too specific. Too vague, and you’ll end up with something generic. Too specific and you limit AI’s creativity.

Priming your Prompt

You can use your first interaction with a chatbot to “prime” the conversation’s structure and/or style. For example:

Style Prompt:

  • You are an 18th Century Victorian British Noble. Please respond to all future prompts in this manner.
  • Please respond to all queries in the style of the King James Bible.

Structure Prompt:

  • Please act as a writing assistant. When I give you text to review, please respond in this format:
    • Level of writing (e.g. high school, college)
    • Well written (yes, no, maybe)
    • Writing advice (free form advice on the writing
    • If you understand, say yes.
  • You are now a Game Master for a fantasy role playing game. Please analyze the following puzzles and give me feedback in a 1-10 scale for the following parameters:
    • level of complexity
    • difficulty
    • danger level (if puzzle also includes a danger element) 

Learning about Prompts

The following articles and resources will help you further understand prompt engineering and the necessity of using well conceived prompts to get the best results for the AI.