🤖 PROMPT POETS

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QUICKFATES

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DEEPFATE 🤖 PROMPT POETS

A new cohort of human “prompt poets” are becoming experts in getting better copy out of AI. Should they just be honing their writing skills instead?

RUBEN HASSID IS a ChatGPT expert.

• The LinkedIn influencer has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours working with the AI-powered chatbot learning how to optimize text prompts in order to get the output you want.

• He’s spent countless more hours diligently summarizing and consistently distributing his learnings on LinkedIn.

• Ruben is part of a growing cohort of “prompt poets,” or people with a high level of expertise with regard to what exactly to feed ChatGPT in order to get it to generate better copy.

READING RUBEN’S LATEST 57-page LinkedIn carousel on how to prompt ChatGPT, and another app called Taplio, to find popular tweets and essentially rephrase them, I couldn't help but think two things:

• (1) Apparently, the secret to getting what you want from ChatGPT —funnily enough— is the exact same as the secret to getting what you want from humans: (a) be incredibly specific with your ask, and (b) break the task down into small, doable, and digestable components.

• And (2) an awful lot of work goes into prompting. So much so that a fast writer might be able to compete. At least for now.

ZOOM OUT: PEOPLE seem to be in two camps about all this when it comes to ChatGPT and tools like it.

• One camp is absolutely convinced that it will not only change the world but put all content writers and most journalists out of a job. They stand ready to embrace our new AI overlords, and become really adept at “prompting the poetry,” as it were.

• This camp is popular. Ruben alone has 46,000 followers on LinkedIn.

• The other camp, however, thinks it’s all hype, and will flame out as users become disillusioned by wrong answers and inconsistent results.

• The second camp’s position was bolstered this week by a potentially embarrassing error (or punctuation quirk, the jury’s still out) that appeared in Google’s official video launching its AI chatbot, Bard.

• In the promo video, Bard gave an answer that looked, or at least seemed, wrong.

• The market kind of freaked, sending $GOOG stock down 7% right away, and another 4% the next day.

BUT. WHAT IF both camps are right and AI is both the future, and a bit disappointing?

• An analogy: custom dressmakers can still find work in our TikTok x Shein world.

• In other words, haute couture fashion and Savile Row do, actually, coexist with H&M, Zara, and Primark.

• The more you look for examples of this analogy in the wild, the more you see it:

• The Rolls-Royce Boat Tail (Bing it) drives the same road as a Renault Clio.

• You can Google legal advice, or you can hire a star litigator.

THIS IS CHATGPT’s future —at the moment.

• High quality human brainpower and creative output will still be in demand when the means are there and/or the stakes are high, in the same way that haute couture fashion and US$2000 an hour lawyers still exist.

• When all is said and done, we’ll all be doing our best to prompt ChatGPT, and there will likely be far, far fewer human writers.

• But the ones that remain will command sky-high fees, and the superior quality of their output will be noticeable.

More:

The Clippy of AI: Why the Google Bard v Microsoft Bing war will flame out »»

Ruben Hassid’s 57 page ChatGPT tutorial »»

AI is the latest Wall Street craze. Is it also the next bubble? »»

None of the above is financial advice.

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.