LLMs & Generative AI · 2.3
✍️ Prompting as a Skill
How to actually get good results out of AI tools⏱ ~2 min
🗺️A vague request gets a vague answer
Asking an LLM 'tell me about dogs' is like telling a taxi driver 'just drive.' You'll go somewhere, but probably not where you wanted. Good prompting is giving clear directions: where you're going, how you want to get there, and what a good arrival looks like.
The Ingredients of a Good Prompt
| Ingredient | What to Include | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Who you want the AI to act as | 'You are a patient biology tutor for a 10th grader.' |
| Task | Exactly what you want done | 'Explain how vaccines work.' |
| Context | Background it needs | 'I already understand what a virus is.' |
| Format | How you want the answer shaped | 'Use a simple analogy, then 3 bullet points.' |
| Constraints | Limits and rules | 'Keep it under 150 words. No jargon.' |
Techniques That Reliably Improve Results
- •Be specific — 'a 200-word summary for beginners' beats 'summarize this'
- •Give examples — show one or two examples of what you want (called 'few-shot prompting')
- •Ask it to think step by step — for reasoning or math, this measurably improves accuracy
- •Iterate — treat it as a conversation; refine your request based on what you get back
- •Ask it to ask you questions — 'What do you need to know to do this well?' surfaces missing context
Prompting Is Not Cheating — Verification Is Your Job
💡 TipUsing AI to learn, draft, and explore is a genuine 21st-century skill. But you own the output. If you submit AI writing as your own for school, that's usually plagiarism — check your school's policy. The best use: let AI help you understand and draft, then make the work truly yours and verify every fact.
🔗DeepLearning.AI — ChatGPT Prompt Engineering
Andrew Ng's platform offers short, high-quality courses on prompting and building with LLMs — several are free.
https://www.deeplearning.ai
🧠Quick Checkfirst try = +5 XP
Which makes the BEST prompt?
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