💎 4 ways to boost ChatGPT

Simple tactics for getting useful responses

The framing of our queries impacts the quality of ChatGPT’s responses

To help you make the most of ChatGPT, I’ve invited & edited today’s guest post from the author of a smart AI newsletter called The Artificial Corner. I appreciate how Frank Andrade pushes ChatGPT to produce better results with four simple, clever tactics. He offers practical examples to help us all use AI more effectively.

New to Wonder Tools? Here’s the best of the archive. I recently posted about my fave new way to make videos with AI + the little tools I rely on in my office.

Surprising ways to prompt AI 😳

Frank Andrade: Most of us fail to make the most of ChatGPT.

1. We omit examples in our prompts.

2. We fail to assign roles to ChatGPT to guide its behavior.

3. We let ChatGPT guess instead of providing it with clear guidance.

If you rely on vague prompts, learning how to create high-quality instructions will get you better results. It’s a skill often referred to as prompt engineering. Here are several techniques to get you to the next level.

1. Give ChatGPT a role to play

When ChatGPT’s default behavior doesn’t yield the result you’re aiming for, consider assigning it a specific role.

Say you want to practice for a job interview. By telling ChatGPT to “act as hiring manager” and adding more details to the prompt, you’ll be able to simulate a job interview for any position. Here’s an example: 👇

Assigning ChatGPT a clear role — with guidance about how to respond— can help produce a fruitful dialogue.

As you can see, ChatGPT behaves like it’s interviewing me for a job position.

Similarly, you can turn ChatGPT into a language tutor to practice a foreign language. Or have it act as a movie critic to analyze a movie.

Simply begin your prompt with the words “Act as a … ” Then add as many details as possible. If you need some inspiration, check this exhaustive repository where you’ll find prompts to make ChatGPT behave like a stand-up comedian, doctor, and more.

2. Add personality to your prompts

The next two prompting tactics are helpful for generating text for emails, blogs, newsletter posts, articles, etc.

Add personality to your prompts by specifying a style and using detailed descriptors. Adding a style for the AI to adopt can yield text with the appropriate tone, level of formality, and descriptiveness. For example:

Write [topic] in the style of an expert in [field] with 10+ years of experience.

To further customize the output we can add adjectives as descriptors.

Say you’re exploring ideas for a blog post on the extent to which AI will or won’t replace humans in a particular domain. If you create a cursory prompt, such as “write a blog post on how AI will replace humans,” you’ll likely get a generic response.

When you add descriptive adjectives — such as inspiring, sarcastic, intriguing, and entertaining— the output will significantly change.

To demonstrate, let’s add descriptors to our previous prompt.

Write a witty blog post on why AI will not replace humans in the realm of mapmaking. Write in the style of an expert in cartography and artificial intelligence with 10+ years of experience. Explain using funny examples

In our example, the style of an expert in cartography and AI — along with terms like witty or funny— add a distinct touch to the text generated by ChatGPT.

We can also use generated input to strengthen ideas for our blog post. For example, before generating the post with the previous prompt we could first generate input.

Generate five fact-based points to support the idea that “AI will not replace humans in [this particular domain]”

Once we have these points that draw on facts — and have checked them for accuracy — we can feed this information to the subsequent prompt to further flesh it out and yield an even stronger response.

# Fact 1 / Point 1
# Fact 2 / Point 2
# Fact 3 / Point 3 etc

Use the above facts to write a witty blog post on why AI will not replace humans [in this particular domain, i.e. mapmaking]. Write in the style of an expert in artificial intelligence and cartography with 10+ years of experience. Explain using funny examples.

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3. Create your own custom instructions

ChatGPT users often forget to improve ChatGPT responses with custom instructions. OpenAI’s official guidance says these instructions “allow you to add preferences or requirements you’d like ChatGPT to consider when generating its responses.”

Rather than mentioning your specific context over and over every time you type out a prompt, just encode a persistent instruction. It can say “I work on science education programs for third-grade students” or “I’m a software developer and solely use golang.”

You can also add stylistic preferences, like “When discussing potential solutions for work-related items, present the information in a table format, outlining the pros and cons of each option—to allow for clearer comparisons that aid in decision-making.”

Remember to tailor custom instructions to your own needs, and be as specific and detailed as possible.

Many sites — like this Reddit thread — offer samples and suggestions for ChatGPT Custom Instructions. You can use those as starting points. Adapt them to suit your needs.

I learned this lesson when taking a ChatGPT for Data Analytics course. The instructor developed custom instructions that were great for the course but might not be as useful for other data analysts.

I took a few of his instructions to develop my own. Below are the instructions I took from the template.

When generating visualizations, prioritize the following:
- Utilize Seaborn over Matplotlib
- Always use a dark theme/background [e.g., sns.set(style="darkgrid")
plt.style.use("dark_background")]
- For bar charts, always order high to low
- For color palettes, prioritize the following:
1. "Blues_r" - use for sequential and comparison (don't use "Blues_d")
2. "Bright" - use for qualitative analysis only

As a data analyst, I used those instructions to customize the visualizations that ChatGPT generates. Regardless of your profession, add custom instructions that suit your needs.

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4. Consider talking with ChatGPT instead of typing

ChatGPT’s iOS/Android apps helpfully allow you to interact by speaking rather than typing. Here’s where to find this feature on the phone app.

Talking allows you to further tailor your interaction by more easily providing detailed guidance and context, and following up with iterative interactions.

Here are three examples illustrating how to capitalize on voice interaction.

1. Explore topics as if you were chatting with a friend or professor

2. Simulate a job interview as if you were with a real interviewer

3. Practice a foreign language as if you were with a language buddy

What are your favorite tips and tricks for making the most of ChatGPT? Leave a comment 👇

Curious to learn more from today’s guest contributor?

From The PyCoach: Check out my ChatGPT course where I teaches prompt engineering techniques to get better responses. Learn how to make the most of ChatGPT’s most powerful features such as GPT-4o, data analysis, vision, voice, GPTs, AI images, and others.