Why is prompt engineering a thing?
The term prompt engineering has emerged in the last few months since the arrival of ChatGPT. But where did it come from and why is it even a discipline?
With tools like ChatGPT, anyone can now ask the computer to do something on their behalf. English is the new programming language.
However, the same challenges that have always existed with natural language programming are still there today.
Intent. What is the user’s exact intent?
Programming languages such as Java and Ruby are very precise. They have formal definitions and constructs that specify exactly what the computer should do. English is not as precise. It can be ambiguous. Thus, the computer needs to make some assumptions about what you want. No assumptions are needed in formal programming languages.
Case in point: Write me a paragraph …
I asked ChatGPT to do the following:
It produced a very nice paragraph. However, I ran that through the Grammarly plagiarism checker and it found significant plagiarism.
Is ChatGPT simply an industrial-size plagiarism machine?
I certainly did not intend for it to echo back to me something someone else already wrote. I wanted original content that I could actually…
