Prompt engineering techniques for GenAI power users

Left and right, modern enterprises are looking for ways to leverage generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to enhance their internal operations and their customer-facing products. If your enterprise is riding this wave of large language model (LLM) and GenAI innovation, then you’re likely facing a lot of decisions. As a decision-maker, understanding the foundational concept of prompt engineering can help you make informed choices as you invest in and deploy GenAI solutions. 

Many enterprises may prematurely turn to complex and costly solutions—such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or fine-tuning an LLM—without first exploring the potential of good prompt engineering. Often, refining how you craft your prompts significantly enhances the performance of GenAI models, delivering the desired results without the need for additional resources. 

Prompt engineering is crucial for implementing a GenAI system effectively. If you can master it, then your organization can maximize the capabilities of its GenAI systems, potentially saving time and money. 

What is prompt engineering? 

Prompt engineering involves crafting the inputs—known as prompts—to your GenAI models, in order to guide their outputs. Put simply, prompt engineering comes down to framing your questions or commands in a way that optimizes the ability of your GenAI application to understand and respond accurately. 

Many users underestimate the value of good prompts when seeking effective and accurate results from GenAI models. However, a well-crafted prompt can significantly improve the quality of a model's output. With better prompts, you’ll get responses that are more relevant, coherent, and useful. Conversely, poorly constructed prompts can lead to vague, irrelevant, or incorrect responses. 

How GenAI applications process and use prompts 

To lay down a strong foundation of concepts, let’s walk through how a GenAI application processes and uses prompts. This involves the following key steps: 

Step 1: Interpret inputs 

This first step begins with parsing the user’s input text to understand its basic components. In this process, the model breaks the input into their smallest units of meaning, called tokens. Each token is mapped to a numerical representation that the model can process. 

As part of input interpretation, the model uses attention mechanisms to weigh the importance of various tokens based on their relevance to the input as a whole. This technique enables the model to prioritize the crucial parts of the prompt. Through this approach, a model enhances its accuracy by interpreting the nuances in user queries. 

Step 2: Build contextual understanding 

After interpretation, the model works to build a contextual understanding. It considers the input within a wider context. That context may include things like prior interactions, external knowledge bases, or basic reasoning. It’s here that the model leans on its pre-trained knowledge to create a rich contextual framework. 

Understandably, this step is where the quality of a model's training data becomes evident. The model draws on patterns and information learned from diverse data sources to understand the input in a meaningful way. 

As a side note, LLMs are increasingly adept at handling long-range dependencies in text. They can maintain context over extended dialogues or complex paragraphs, understanding how different parts of the text relate to each other. This ability to maintain and utilize context is essential for generating coherent and relevant answers.

Step 3: Generate a response 

Finally, the application takes the interpreted input and the context it has built, and it crafts a response. This comes down to selecting words and structuring sentences that best match the original query from the user. Ultimately, the goal of the model is to use its understanding to create an output that is both contextually relevant and linguistically accurate. 

We see how the initial prompt from a user kicks off a pipeline of processes which, although they seem instantaneous, are incredibly complex. One small change in a prompt input can result in a vastly different response. Prompt engineering is about crafting prompts in just the right way to get the results you’re looking for.

Importance of prompt engineering in various industries 

Prompt engineering can play a vital role in your GenAI application, regardless of your industry. For example, in customer service, GenAI models are used to handle customer inquiries. When you supply effective prompts, you ensure that your application’s responses are helpful and accurate. This improves customer satisfaction which, ultimately, affects your bottom line. 

In content creation, writers and marketers use GenAI to craft ideas and drafts. In some cases, they may even use GenAI to produce entire articles. Often, it’s not enough to tell AI: “Write me a blog post about social media and mental health.” By using clear and precise prompts, content creators can get results that meet specific guidelines and objectives. 

In data analysis, data engineers can use GenAI to interpret complex datasets. However, they can use proper prompts to help the model extract genuinely meaningful insights and present them in an understandable format. 

How much can you influence with prompt engineering? 

The degree of influence you can achieve through well-crafted prompts depends on several factors.  

Model type 

Different GenAI models vary in their capabilities. More advanced models, such as GPT-4o, can handle complex prompts better than simpler models. Because they’ve been trained on massive datasets, they’re able to understand more nuanced instructions. This makes them more responsive to detailed and specific prompts. On the other hand, a simpler model might struggle with complex queries, providing less accurate responses. 

Choosing the right model for your application is important. Do your tasks require detailed and sophisticated outputs? If so, then investing in a more advanced model may pay dividends when it comes to prompt engineering. 

Task complexity 

The complexity of the task you're attempting also affects how much influence you can exert through prompt engineering. A simple task such as answering straightforward questions will require less detailed prompts. For example, a direct and simple knowledge query such as, "Who invented the light bulb?" is one that most models can handle effectively with minimal prompting. 

On the other hand, more complex tasks—like generating detailed reports or creative content—will benefit from more intricate prompts. With these kinds of tasks, you need your model to understand certain critical aspects and provide comprehensive responses. In cases like these, you’ll benefit from being able to break down the task into smaller steps or provide detailed context within your prompt. This approach can guide the model to produce more accurate and relevant outputs. 

Testing and comparing prompts 

How effective are your prompts, and how do you evaluate their effectiveness? By testing, comparing, and evaluating prompts, you can improve their effectiveness at producing the desired results. 

Here are some techniques to help you with this: 

• A/B testing: A/B testing involves comparing two different prompts to see which one performs better. It’s a simple but effective method for improving your prompt engineering techniques. As you test variations of a prompt, you can determine which prompt yields the most accurate and relevant response.
• Performance metrics: Track metrics to help you evaluate prompts. Key metrics for evaluating prompts include accuracy, relevance, and coherence. By defining these metrics, you can systematically measure how well different prompts perform.
• User feedback: You can also gather qualitative feedback from users who interact with your GenAI systems. This feedback is filled with valuable insights into the effectiveness of different prompts. Users can highlight which prompts result in satisfactory outputs, and which ones need improvement.
• Iterative improvement: As you continuously test and analyze prompts, you can iteratively refine them. Over time, you will gradually—but substantially—enhance the performance of your GenAI system by identifying weaknesses in your prompts, making adjustments, and then re-evaluating their effectiveness.
• Contextual variations: Consider testing prompts with different contextual variations. This will help you understand how changes in context affect the responses. For example, test the same prompt with different background information. Doing so lets you better map the provided context to its resulting output. 

By using these methods to test and compare prompts, you can systematically improve the performance of your GenAI models. This will keep your applications accurate, relevant, and aligned with your business objectives. 

Basic prompt engineering techniques 

Effective prompt engineering relies on several key techniques to ensure that the GenAI model produces accurate and useful outputs. It’s likely that you already habitually employ some of the basic techniques in your interactions with GenAI applications. Nonetheless, let’s outline them for clarity. 

Be specific and clear 

Clear and specific prompts lead to better responses. Undoubtedly, vague prompts result in ambiguous or off-target outputs. The more specific you are with your prompts, the better the model can understand and respond appropriately. This clarity is crucial in professional and operational contexts where precise and accurate outputs are essential. 

Poor: “Tell me about the project.” 

Better: “Provide a summary of the key milestones achieved in the XYZ project in the last quarter." 

The more specific and clear you are in your prompt, the better the model can understand and provide accurate information. By using clear prompts to reduce the model’s need to infer what you want, you minimize the potential for wrong assumptions and errors.  

Provide context 

You will receive more relevant responses if you provide the model with sufficient background information. Contextual details can include the purpose of your request, any relevant history, or specific details. 

Poor: “Summarize the marketing report for me.” 

Better: "Summarize the recent marketing report for our new product launch, focusing on customer feedback and sales data." 

Providing adequate context helps your model understand the broader situation so that it can tailor its response accordingly. This approach is especially useful for complex queries where understanding the background will lead to more precise and insightful answers. 

Ask direct questions 

Direct questions can lead to more accurate responses.  

Poor: "Explain climate change." 

Better: "What are the primary human activities contributing to climate change?" 

Direct questions help focus the model's attention on the specific information you need. This technique is particularly effective for obtaining concise and relevant answers, as it limits the scope of the response. It also directs the model to address the specific aspect of the topic you are interested in. 

Use examples 

Examples help guide the model by providing the kind of format or content that you are looking for. 

OK: “List three key benefits for our software.” 

Better: “List three key benefits of our software, similar to how you would list features: 1. Feature A - Description, 2. Feature B - Description, 3. Feature C - Description." 

When you provide examples within your prompts, you help the model understand exactly what type of output you are expecting. This technique is especially useful when: 

• The desired response format is complex
• You need the model to follow a specific structure
• Specify the format 

It’s also helpful to define the desired format of the response. This can improve clarity and usefulness. 

Poor: “What were some of the main findings from the research report?” 

Better: “Provide a bulleted list of the main findings from the research report. Each item in the list should be a key phrase in the form of an action-oriented imperative, followed by a colon and a one-sentence elaboration." 

Specifying the format helps the model organize the information in a way that is most useful to you. Whether you need a list, a summary, a table, or another specific format, clearly stating this in your prompt can significantly enhance the usability of the output. 

Use role-playing 

Assigning roles to your model can enhance the interaction, and it will guide how the model responds. 

OK: “Explain the benefits of investing in mutual funds.” 

Better: “Take on the role of a friendly and helpful financial advisor. You’re talking to a client who is new to investing. Explain the benefits of investing in mutual funds.” 

Role-playing prompts help the model adopt a specific perspective or tone. This will yield responses that are more relevant and tailored to your needs. The role-playing technique is particularly effective in scenarios where the context or audience requires a specific approach or style of communication. 

Mastering prompt engineering strategies

As you apply some of these basic prompt engineering techniques, you will significantly enhance the quality of the outputs generated by your GenAI models. Understanding prompt engineering is essential to maximizing the potential of your AI systems. Creating specific and well-structured prompts can lead to more accurate and relevant outputs.  

No matter the use case, the ability to influence AI behavior can help enterprises and individuals get the most out of their AI models. Learn how to transform your HR operations with GenAI and smart assistants. 

Don't miss the second post in this two-part series: 6 advanced AI prompt engineering techniques for better outputs