Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.

New skill sets are required for best results in engaging AI chatbots for targeted inquiries.
In my column last week, I wrote about the concept of AI making superhumans out of anyone. My premise is that AI enables people to have augmented intelligence that gives them greater knowledge of the world around them and themselves. This AI-as-a-tool is how people need to think about how AI will be necessary to them individually.
While a user can input a fundamental free-form question to get an answer to their query, the reality is that to get the best answer possible is to learn to ask a question more appropriately in terms an AI engine can understand to then present the best solution possible.
I liken this to learning to talk in a new foreign language at the most basic level to get answers to questions. When I go to a new country, I learn the words for please and thank you, hello and goodbye, proper pronouns for addressing a person, essential food items, and the question, “How do I get to?” whenever I am headed out and about.
The skill used to ask chat engines more computer-literate questions is called “prompt engineering”. This skill has become a job title within companies that have had their programmers take dedicated, prompt engineering courses that leverage their current programming skills to ask better business questions to gain more accurate answers.
Prompt engineering is crafting effective prompts or questions for large language models (LLMs) to generate desired outputs. It’s a critical skill for anyone working with LLMs, as it can make a big difference in the quality and relevance of the results.
Here are some key skills for prompt engineering:
Natural language processing (NLP): A strong understanding of NLP is essential for crafting clear, concise, and unambiguous prompts. This includes understanding concepts like syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Machine Learning (ML): Familiarity with ML concepts like supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning can help you understand how LLMs work and how to craft prompts that effectively guide their learning process.
This includes creativity: Prompt engineering is a creative process that requires thinking outside the box and coming up with new and innovative ways to get the desired results from an LLM.
One also needs to deploy problem-solving: Prompt engineering is often an iterative process, requiring the ability to identify and solve problems that arise when working with LLMs.
Here are some resources for learning prompt engineering skills:
Google AI’s Prompt Tuning Guide: This guide provides a comprehensive overview of prompt engineering, including best practices, common pitfalls, and advanced techniques.
Hugging Face’s Prompt Engineering Course: This course is a hands-on introduction to prompt engineering, covering topics like prompt design, evaluation, and optimization.
Element AI’s Prompt Engineering Blog: This blog is a great resource for staying up-to-date on the latest prompt engineering research and best practices.
I spoke with some prompt engineers and asked for their recommendations on becoming more fluent in writing AI prompts more effectively. Here is what they told me-
Start with the basics: Before experimenting with advanced prompt engineering techniques, ensure you have a strong understanding of the basics of NLP and ML.

While most of these courses favor folks with at least some understanding of computer programming, if you want to write better prompts to gain more accurate results, learning the basics of NLP and ML in the first two courses is an excellent place to start.
However, if you are a novice and want to gain a better understanding of what ChatGPT and other AI chat engines are about and how to use them more effectively, I recommend a book from my friend Pam Baker. She has written an excellent primer for anyone that wants to come up to speed fast and learn to write better prompts for their use. The book is ChatGPT for Dummies, published by Wiley and written by Pam Baker.
As I wrote last week, AI will help augment people’s intelligence and give them the information needed to live more informed lives. However, to get the best results, people need to learn to write their prompts or questions in ways that current chat engines can understand and deliver the best results.
As the LLMs process more data and gain more knowledge diversity, there will likely be a time for asking a question in free form and not in a specialized prompt format. But, for now, learning to write prompts that chatbots understand will give a person the best results for their queries.

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