Generative AI and library skills

Any use of GenAI requires you to use specific and considered prompts to achieve effective results.

Here are some general principles to get you started with composing effective prompts:

• Be clear about what you want it to do - ask it a question or give it instructions.
• Give context, data and / or examples - ensure you give the tool the relevant information to inform its output.
• Specify what you want it to output, e.g. a short paragraph, 5 bullet points, in tabular format that I can paste into Excel.
• Consider the order of elements of the prompt - this can make a difference, but you will never get the same response even with the same prompt.
• For complicated instructions, give it a series of steps.
• Specify the tone and style you wish the output to have. e.g. ‘use a formal tone suitable for an academic literature review’
• Iterate and refine - many GenAI tools allow iterative refinement, where you can refine what you are asking through a developing conversation. Review what it has told you and follow up with further prompts to get a better response. Be aware that in long conversations the tool can lose track of what has been said before and you can end up going round in circles.
• Be grammatically clear and use short sentences.
• Be specific and precise.

Experiment with your prompting to see how framing your prompt in different ways can produce different results. A badly framed prompt can lead to hallucinations, where the GenAI tool generates fabricated content.
 

In the context of GenAI, a 'prompt' is the input or query provided to the AI model to generate a response. It can be a question, a statement, or any text that guides the AI on what kind of output is expected. The quality and clarity of the prompt can significantly influence the relevance and accuracy of the AI’s response.

Prompt engineering is the practice of designing and refining prompts to effectively guide GenAI models to produce accurate and relevant outputs.

Prompt engineering requires critical thinking skills and some technical knowledge of how GenAI works, but developing even basic skills in effective prompting can help you get the most out of using GenAI.