ChatGPT Prompt Engineering Primer

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Define ChatGPT and other Gen AI-related terms
• Identify ways to use ChatGPT
• Converse effectively with ChatGPT
• Refine ChatGPT’s responses
• Use ChatGPT in creative ways
• List potential uses of GPTs and LLMs that are relevant to you
• Plan your personal & team strategy for using Generative AI

Audience/Prerequisites

All professionals would benefit from this training. There is no need for a technical background or any knowledge of AI.

Outline

Part 1: ChatGPT Basics & Underlying Concepts

We begin by spending just a little time describing ChatGPT and defining relevant terminology to set the stage for learning. The Q&A allows learners to quickly confirm their understandings so we can get to the fun and interesting part, using this tool.

1. Definitions
2. Types of GPTs (Chat & others)
3. The role of data (and your company’s data)
4. What ChatGPT is good at (and not good at)
5. Who can use ChatGPT (and for what)?
6. Q&A

Part 2: Interacting with ChatGPT

Most of our time in this short course is spent interacting with ChatGPT. Each of the sub-sections below introduces a specific usage mode, and includes:

• Examples – The instructor shows multiple examples of that usage mode.
• Play-time – Learners are allowed time to try their hand with that usage mode on their own.
• Show and Tell – Learners share and discuss their experiences with that usage mode with each other and get feedback from the instructor.

Converse with ChatGPT

We start with the most basic interactions with ChatGPT:

• Ask questions
• Use chained prompts (and break chains when needed)
• Use strong and weak verbs in prompts.
• With Examples, Play-time, Show and Tell

Prompt ChatGPT to tailor its response

ChatGPT’s responses will sometimes not meet your needs. They may be too long and verbose, too short and cryptic, or not laid out in a useful way. So, we will look at various ways to ask it to provide or restate its response in more appropriate ways.

• Summarize long responses
• Expand on short responses
• Format responses (e.g., bulleted or numbered lists, headings, etc.)
• Provide an example of content & format you want it to respond with

Prompt ChatGPT to use appropriate roles

We will look at how to focus ChatGPT’s interactions with you based on role definitions.

• Provide responses appropriate for a particular role or audience
• Provide responses appropriate to a channel (e.g. social media)
• Play a role in how it responds
• Role-play with you

Prompting ChatGPT to respond with questions

ChatGPT can do more than just answer questions. We will look at how to prompt it to ask questions as well.

• Prompt it to provide questions (e.g. for an interview)
• Prompt it to ask clarifying questions before responding

Providing data to ChatGPT

The free public version of ChatGPT cannot access data. So, we will look at ways you can provide it with the data you want it to use in its responses.

• Loading the prompt with data
• Providing data in multiple prompts for a single response
• With Examples, Play-time, Show and Tell

Part 3: Advanced Use Cases & Interactions

Connecting ChatGPT to other applications

We will explore a variety of tools that can be used to connect applications to the paid version of ChatGPT.

• Plug-ins for commercial applications (e.g. Excel) to use ChatGPT
• ChatGPT’s API for writing your own plug-ins or adding ChatGPT capabilities to your company’s applications

Making data available to ChatGPT

We will explore a variety of ways to enable ChatGPT to use other data.

• Plug-ins for ChatGPT to access external data sources (e.g. Wikipedia)
• Tools to feed large data sets into ChatGPT’s prompts
• Using a private LLM (Large Language Model) to enable ChatGPT to use specialized language and terminology
• Grounding ChatGPT on your company’s data

Part 4: Class wrap-up and Q&A