Prompt Engineering: A new engineering craft
Prompt Engineering: How would prompt engineering change the way people think?
What is Prompt Engineering?
Prompt Engineering is essentially the art to accurately extract information from an LLM (Large Language Models). I consider prompt engineering to be a broader job title (think of this as a data scientist). Prompt Engineering can be classified into the following categories:
- Prompt Engineering (Non CS/ML background): This category is targeted towards individuals who do not have a M.L background and are primarily people who would typically use an interface such as ChatGPT.
- Prompt Engineering (CS/ML background): This category is targetted towards individuals with a M.L background and are primarily Machine Learning Engineers/Data Scientists who can effectively combine prompt engineering methods and other M.L models to solve a data problem. Carefully designed prompts can easily be converted into a step by step process to solve a problem.
Prompt Engineering coupled with an additional skill would be what differentiates the ordinary prompt engineers and extraordinary prompt engineers.
Qualities for a good prompt engineer
A great prompt engineer comprises the following skills:
- Preferred knowledge/experience/degree in CS/M.L/Data Science/A.I (Can hack things together etc)
- Domain expert in their field of choice (To be a strong prompt engineer, one needs to have an in-depth knowledge of the field)
- Critical Thinking and Scientific Temperament: Ability to question things scientifically and to ask good questions
Prompt Engineering Use cases
Prompt Engineering can be used in any industry but what differentiates ordinary prompt engineers and extraordinary prompt engineers are machine learning engineering/full stack data science skills and the ability to hack things together and build a usable data product.
Prompt Engineering as an augmented tool
For practically any task, we can use prompt engineering to boost our productivity or ease up tasks. An example would be helping me write this blog.
Prompt Engineering as a classifier
Utilizing few-shot/one-shot prompting, prompt engineering can successfully decode complex classifications tasks. Combining these steps to solve a data business problem can be an important use case. Constructing business problems as a classification task is the most complex aspect of this methodology.
Prompt Engineering in Computational Biomedicine
Prompt Engineering in Medicine is no less than a revolutionary feat but at this point in time, the systems are not as robust. Prompt Engineering in Biomedicine presents a new paradigm where medical doctors would just “prompt” the medical LLM to specify steps, treatments, send notifications, etc. It would be like an intelligent medical operating system but unlike a regular OS, this would mostly be chat driven. Hallucination is the major concern for these LLMs and employing domain experts would allow us to reduce hallucination instances, particularly in medicine.
Prompt Engineering for design
A basic level of Prompt Engineering would be the goto standard for designing graphics. A good graphics designer would be someone would is an expert in describing the design not using the tools. This highlights the biggest change Prompt Engineering would create, critical thinking.
Conclusion
Prompt Engineering defines a new paradigm and as A.I systems become more advanced, we will see an increased use of the word “prompt engineer”. Increaseing depth instead of breadth would be extremely valuable and would practically change how things take place.
