EP 41: Top 20 Structured Prompts to Make You Smarter in 2024

Transcript for this Episode:

INTRODUCTION VOICEOVER: This is Tech UNMUTED. The podcast of modern collaboration – where we tell the stories of how collaboration tools enable businesses to be more efficient and connected. With your hosts, George Schoenstein and Santi Cuellar. Welcome to Tech UNMUTED.

SANTI: Welcome to another episode of Tech UNMUTED. Today, I want to spend some time doing a little bit of a tutorial. We had an episode, an earlier episode, where we talked about some best practices around structuring your prompts. When you're interacting with an artificial intelligent large language model, like Copilot, like ChatGPT, there's a certain structure to your prompt that would help you get the best results. Great. We did that. We covered that on an earlier episode.

What I really want to do is give you some of the top 20 prompts that I think would be useful for you, whether you're doing this as a means of just being more productive. Me, personally, what I enjoy about artificial intelligence, the productivity is just great, but I really like the personal learning aspect.

How about I give you 20 structured prompts that you'll be able to tailor for yourself that will make you smarter in 2024? I'm going to share with you those prompts, and I'm going to go one by one, and I will narrate them. I'm not sharing a screen. You'll be able to hear the prompts, and you'll be able to customize the prompt to your specific topic.

Prompt number one, here's a great one. Explain the concept of, insert your topic here, and its significance. Every time I say insert your topic here, or I pause and give you a bracket, that's for you to customize your input. Explain the concept of, insert topic, and its significance. Great prompt, and it should yield pretty good results on just about every topic that you want to insert right there in the middle.

Prompt number two, can you provide a step-by-step guide on how to perform, insert your specific task? See what I said? I said, can you provide a step-by-step guide? Now I'm asking for detail, and the AI will produce that. It will actually produce a step-by-step guide on whatever that specific task you're asking for. Be very specific on that task.

Another great prompt that I use, I really like this one, it is, compare and contrast, and then insert here two concepts or two technologies or two ideas or two philosophical thoughts, whatever those two things are, insert them there. The prompt was compare and contrast. That's a great prompt for artificial intelligence, and I learn so much when I use this prompt because it's amazing what it produces.

Another one, what are the pros and cons? Again, insert here your technology, your methodology, your idea, your philosophy, whatever it is, insert it. It's very similar to the compare and contrast, but you do get different results when you do the pros and cons. In fact, go ahead and try it. Pick the exact same topic, use the two prompts and look at the results. It's very good. I use these a lot. These are actual prompts that I use for my own personal learning.

In my household, we tend to like history. In fact, one of my kids is actually majoring in history, medieval history out of all history. He likes that stuff. Whereas my oldest son, who's a military man, he is very much into US history. I have used this before, and the description is describe the historical events leading to, and then go ahead and insert that specific historical period or event that you want to reference. Describe the historical events leading to, and it'll give you an amazing output. When you think you know your history and you ask that question, you'll be surprised the outputs that you get from AI. I love that stuff.

Here's another one. We're on number six. I promised you 20. We're on number six. Can you help me brainstorm ideas for, and then here you can insert your project, your story, whatever it is you're working on. Brainstorming ideas, AI's love to brainstorm ideas. It's fascinating.

Here is prompt number seven. Provide an overview of the impact of and then on. In other words, provide an overview of the impact of a specific phenomenon on maybe society, maybe an industry. I'm asking for an impact from something on something else. That's the structure. It's the word on that connects the two. Again, it should give you very good results when you do that. Again, these are just structured prompts to make you smarter. I use them. I'm sharing this list with you.

Another one, number eight. I like scientific stuff. Don't get me started on quantum entanglement. I geek out when I read stuff like that. I do ask questions about quantum stuff just because it's fun. For example, you can say, how does, and then insert the scientific concept, work at a fundamental level? For example, I actually did that. How does quantum entanglement work at a fundamental level? I got a phenomenal response. You can do that for just about anything.

Something else. I like this approach as well. Number nine. Explain the key principles of, and then you can insert your theory, your framework, whatever you want to really have explained to you. The key here is key principles, and it actually will list out those key principles for you, usually in a bulleted list, which is really helpful. It's a great prompt. I have used it, and I get good results on that as well. It's interesting, though, when you start to ask ethical questions, you do get mixed responses, like it depends on which platform you're asking. If you ask Copilot an ethical question versus if you ask ChatGPT an ethical question, I do see some disparities there between them because they have their own rules, I guess. Sometimes the AI will avoid it altogether, which is interesting enough, or give you some a CYA statement, "Hey, I don't typically engage in this, but here are some things to consider," something like that.

Anyway, I've used this prompt, number 10, which is discuss the ethical implications of, and then insert your technology, your practice, your philosophy, whatever that is, and it'll do that for you. The minute you throw in the word ethical, it's almost like the AI has a red flag that goes up and some AIs will be a little bit more careful right away with how they answer. It's a great prompt. I've used it. I've had good success with it.

One thing about AI is that not only can AI give you a response based on data. Let me pause here for a minute. There's something called AI hallucination. AI hallucination is when the AI makes up something, makes stuff up, but it's making stuff up because of bad data. In other words, you gave it a prompt. It went to the data. The data was not good data, and it made something up. They call it AI hallucination. That's different. You can prompt an AI to give you something that is fictional.

In other words, you want it to make something up. It's different, you're prompting it to. I have asked, and this is my prompt number 11, can you create a fictional story about, and then insert your character or your scenario. It will do that. It will actually make up a story. Not to be confused with AI hallucination. You're actually prompting it to make up something, so it will.

Prompt number 12, list and explain the major components of, and then insert your system, your machine, your technology, whatever that is, and it will give you a response.

Number 13, what are the main challenges faced by, insert an industry, insert a profession, and it will give you a response there as well.

Number 14, describe the steps to optimize a process, a system, whatever that is, you insert it at the end. The keyword there is optimize. By the way, it could be a business process. I've used it for that, especially when it comes product launches. I'll tell you something else, you can actually list out, I guess step-by-step, a process and ask the artificial intelligence, "Can you optimize the following process?" Then you list it, and it will do that for you. It is phenomenal. I've done that. I've used it, and it's actually very, very good. It's a great prompt.

Prompt number 15, can you provide examples of successful-- Insert your business strategy, your marketing strategy, your marketing campaign, and it will give you examples. I have used that prompt as well.

Number 16, discuss the role of-- Maybe it's a historical figure that you insert here, but then you want to give it a second prompt. Let me read that now that you understand what the first insert is, is maybe a historical figure, for example. Here's the second part of the prompt. Discuss the role of Abraham Lincoln in shaping the freedom movement, the fact that he liberated slaves.

Two parts to the prompt, and it will give you a result. That could be anything. I picked Abraham Lincoln because he's one of my favorite presidents. Discuss the role of Abraham Lincoln in shaping the freedom movement or the movement to free slaves, or whatever that historical piece is, and it will give you pretty good results. Again, it's a two-part prompt. We've had a few of those already. You guys are starting to get the idea, sometimes the way you word it and structure it, you're connecting the first piece to the second so that the AI knows exactly what to deliver.

Number 17. We're coming to an end. Number 17, explain the relationship between-- Then enter your two concepts, maybe it's elements, maybe it's two elements. Whatever that may be, insert here.

Number 18, what are the key features and functionalities of-- Maybe it's a software. Maybe it's an application. Maybe it's a piece of hardware.

Number 19. One thing that the AI is really good at is summarizing. It's fantastic. Whenever you include the word summary or summarize, man, AI is in its lane. Something like, for example, summarize the current state of research on-- Insert your scientific or technology topic right here. Maybe it is AI. You can actually say that. Can you summarize the current state of research on artificial intelligence, and it'll tell you.

Then finally, prompt number 20. Again, these are all prompts that I have used and do use. How has, insert your technology here, evolved over the years, and what are its current applications? Unlike some of the other prompts where I had two components that I had to connect, here I have one component, but I'm asking for two things. See the difference? How has artificial intelligence evolved over the years, and what are its current applications? You're going to get two sets of responses for one component.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you some prompts because, let me tell you, I love reading other people's prompts because it gives me ideas. I actually have learned how to prompt an AI from reading and listening to others who are prompting AI. I basically went to my long list of prompts that I have used over the last year, picked my favorite 20, and I just shared it with you. It's nice because you can customize these prompts to whatever topic or component or historical figure or technology that you want to talk about. Just use the same structure, and you'll start getting some pretty good results from these large language models.

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CLOSING VOICEOVER: Visit www.fusionconnect.com/techunmuted for show notes and more episodes. Thanks for listening.

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Produced by: Fusion Connect