Friday, April 5, 2024

Is it a prompt or a conversation?

When working to help leaders and their teams understand generative AI, one of the “rules” I stress is that the word “prompt” is entirely misleading. Instead, I encourage them to adopt the mindset that when working with generative AI “It’s not a prompt, it’s a conversation.“ (And don’t kept me started on the label “prompt engineer.”)

Some deep thinkers I know may dispute this idea based on the fact that generative AI is not actually intelligent nor does it truly “understand” language. (For the record, and to hopefully preempt their emails to me, I agree on both counts).

Yet treating every interaction with these systems as a conversation invites new possibilities. Freed from the mindset that you’re programming something (because you’re not) enables different approaches much as a brainstorming session might.

There’s a great deal more to say on this topic but for now I’ll close with this thought: If you haven’t already done so, upgrade to a paid version of a Generative AI tool, start having conversations about the problems you’re trying to solve then see where the discussion takes you.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Be strong. Lead well.

Chad