BizTech Q&A 54: Am I supposed to talk to it like it's a person?

Answering your questions about business and technology

Question

Some people that I talk to tell me that I am supposed to talk to ChatGPT like it’s a human and other people tell me not to ever do that.  Who should I listen to?

~ L.B.

Answer

Hello L.B.,

The short answer, that probably won’t be very helpful, is that you will get the best output if you talk to it like a chatbot.

That ends up being a strange combination of human language and machine language (aka code).  You won’t really know how to do this until you’ve used the tool for a while.  

What I recommend, especially if you are new to AI tools, is to start by prompting (“talking to”) ChatGPT like it is human.  Notice when that approach doesn’t give you useful feedback.  In those cases you’ll have to play around with different prompting techniques until you get the output that you want.  When something works, take note and use that approach the next time you want similar output.  

Over time, you’ll see what wording(s) work for you in your prompts.  

It is less about exactly how to “talk to” the AI tools and more about getting the output that you are looking for.  A lot of times there will be more than one way to get that output.  

The more advanced you get in your prompting, the less it will sound like you are talking to a human.  It’s all trial, error, and repetition.  Enjoy the ride.


Hope that helps
~ Damien