Artificial Intelligence is evolving fast—and at the center of this evolution is a growing field called prompt engineering. From maximizing productivity with ChatGPT to generating creative and dynamic outputs, prompt engineering is quickly becoming one of the most valuable digital skills today. With tech giants offering salaries up to $335,000 a year, the demand for prompt engineers is only rising.
Welcome to Prompt Engineering
Hello and welcome! I’m Anu Kubo, a software developer and educator. This course is all about helping you master prompt engineering—even if you don’t have a coding background. Whether you're a complete beginner or a professional looking to sharpen your AI skills, you're in the right place.
What You'll Learn:
- What prompt engineering really is
- A crash course in artificial intelligence (AI)
- Understanding LLMs like ChatGPT
- Intro to image, speech, and text generation tools
- Prompting techniques: zero-shot, few-shot, chain of thought
- How to avoid AI hallucinations
- Understanding vector embeddings
- And hands-on practice with ChatGPT
What is Prompt Engineering?
Prompt engineering means crafting, testing, and improving prompts to get the best output from AI systems. It's like communicating clearly with the AI to teach it what you want—whether that's writing code, answering questions, or having a conversation.
Prompt engineers also:
- Refine prompts over time for better accuracy
- Maintain prompt libraries for reuse
- Develop and share best practices
Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence simulates human thinking using large datasets. It doesn’t actually “think”—it just predicts based on patterns from training data. When you give it input, it responds using the most likely output based on what it’s learned.
Why Prompt Engineering Matters
AI is powerful—but unpredictable. A poorly worded prompt may give a poor result. For example, asking “Correct this paragraph” might not teach a student much. But this clear prompt:
I want you to act as a spoken English teacher. I’ll speak to you in English, and you’ll reply in English to help me practice. Keep your replies under 100 words, correct my grammar and typos, and ask me a follow-up question each time.
…will deliver a much better learning experience.
The Power of Linguistics in Prompting
Understanding language—also called linguistics—is key to writing great prompts. This includes:
- Syntax: sentence structure
- Semantics: meaning
- Pragmatics: how context changes meaning
- Computational linguistics: how machines understand language
What Are Language Models?
Language models are the engine behind AI tools like ChatGPT. They learn how humans talk by reading books, websites, and more. When you type something like “Once upon a…”, the model predicts what usually comes next based on its training.
Brief History of Language Models
- 1960s: ELIZA simulates a therapist using pattern matching
- 1970s: SHRDLU understands simple commands
- 2018: OpenAI releases GPT-1
- 2020: GPT-3 launches with 175 billion parameters
- Today: GPT-4 and beyond power tools like ChatGPT
Mindset of a Prompt Engineer
Prompting is like Googling—learning what phrasing works best through trial and error. You’ll ask a question, analyze the result, then tweak your prompt for clarity, tone, or structure.
“Prompting is like designing effective Google searches. There are clearly better and worse ways to write queries.” – Mahail Eric
Using ChatGPT Effectively
To start using ChatGPT:
- Visit OpenAI.com
- Create an account and choose the GPT-4 model
- Click “New Chat” and type your question
- Continue the conversation for refined answers
Developers can also generate API keys to integrate ChatGPT into their own apps.
Tokens: How ChatGPT Works
ChatGPT uses tokens—small chunks of text—to process input. One token equals about 4 characters. You're billed per token, so short, clear prompts are more efficient and affordable.
Prompt Writing Best Practices
Want better results from ChatGPT? Follow these tips:
- Be specific: “Correct grammar and rewrite this paragraph at an 8th grade level” is better than “Fix this.”
- Use personas: Ask the AI to act like a teacher, lawyer, or artist.
- Set format: Request lists, bullet points, word limits, or tone.
- Test and improve: Try different versions of your prompt.
- Avoid assumptions: Don’t bias the answer with leading phrases.
- Break complex tasks: Keep prompts focused and manageable.
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