Artificial Intelligence (AI) Library Guide: How to Ask AI

What is prompt engineering?

A prompt is a way of communicating with an AI tool. Your prompt or question will define the task instructing the AI tool as to what output or information to generate.

This guide looks at how to best input questions and prompts into an AI tool to get the desired output. This is also known as prompt engineering. Be mindful and don't compromise your personal information when looking for information.

DISCLAIMER

The effectiveness and relevance of the guidance on this page will vary depending on the exact tool you are using. The advice given here is considered best practice for most generative AI tools, but be aware that you may need to seek out more specific guidance on how to use certain existing or emerging tools.

Prompt Engineering hints and tips 

It is always best to create your prompts based on what you want to achieve.  Usually assignment questions, projects, dissertations are framed using action verbs and this is the same for instructing the chatbot you are using. Most generative artificial intelligence tools are text based and as a conversational tool will respond to How, What, Where, Why, When questions.

            Example question on Copilot:  What does business ethics mean? Use 10 words.

Response: Business ethics is the moral principles guiding business conduct1.

References used: 1 investopedia.com 2 en.wikipedia.org 3 ibe.org.uk

Note: CoPilot warning: AI-generated content may be incorrect.

In order to get the best results it is better to be more structured with your prompts by providing clear instructions and also constraints.  It is best to consider the following:

• Know your intent, specific task and be concise with framing your question, use action verbs
• Have an idea of the outcome, is it what you expected?

Example prompts:

Asking an AI tool ‘Can you provide dietary advice’ will return a generic response. Prompting it with the following: ‘You are an expert dietician. What dietary advice would you give to a middle-aged man who has high cholesterol levels?’ will return a more tailored response. 

You can ask an AI tool to 'Summarise the text in five bullet points', as opposed to simply ask an AI tool to 'summarise the text'.(You will have to copy and paste the text you want to summarise, or paste the link to a webpage).

Elements to consider when framing your prompt

1. Depending on your topic provide specific markers as part of your question such as: age level, specific health issue, job role etc. 
2. Set Limitations: Limit by number of words, date range, geography. 
3. What level is it directed at? Is it background, education level, basic, in-depth, brief, overview or detailed analysis.  
4. What style or format do you want?  Is it a report, bullet points, summary, email, blog, news article,  graph, table or list. 
5. What will be the tone of the output? Does it need to be professional, friendly, formal, academic? 
6. Within what environment are you aiming at? Is it aimed at finding a job, for workplace, business, education setting? 
7. Does the first result need refining?  If so ask the bot to bold changes it has made in its next response, get feedback on response.

Remember 

AI can provide brief overviews or a summary of a topic. Over relying on AI can become detrimental to your own learning, self development and critical thinking skills. 

Warning

• Ai tools can hallucinate and also produce misleading or false responses.
• Check the output to make sure that the information follows logically from the questions asked. The more inputs or refinements it has to deal with in responding to a question can result in loss of direction or focus as it can forget some of the original prompts.
• The references provided are usually websites so responses lack input from quality peer reviewed research sources.
• Check the references from the output as they may not always be accurate. The CRAAP test is helpful in evaluating quality of sources. Check for the following:

  • Currency

  • Relevance

  • Authority 

  • Accuracy

  • Purpose

• Factcheck any events and dates.