If you're a prompt engineer — a master at coaxing AI models behind products like ChatGPT to produce the best results — you could earn well over six figures. However, an OpenAI employee claims that the talent is not as groundbreaking as it claims.
"Hot take: Many believe prompt engineering is a skill one must learn to be competitive in the future," Logan Kilpatrick, a developer advocate at OpenAI, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week. "The reality is that prompting AI systems is no different than being an effective communicator with other humans.”
While prompt engineering is becoming increasingly popular, the three underlying skills that will genuinely matter in 2024, according to the OpenAI employee, are reading, writing, and speaking. Honing these skills will provide humans a competitive advantage against highly intelligent machines in the future as AI technology advances.
"Focusing on the skills necessary to effectively communicate with humans will future proof you for a world with AGI," he stated. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is the capacity of AI to carry out difficult cognitive tasks like making independent decisions on par with human performance.
Some X users responded to Kilpatrick's post by stating that conversing with AI could actually improve human communication skills.
"Lots of people could learn a great deal about interpersonal communication simply by spending time with these AI systems and learning to work well with them," a user on X noted. After gaining prompt engineering abilities, another X user said that they have improved as a "better communicator and manager".
Additionally, some believe that improving interaction between humans and machines is essential to improving AI's reaction.
"Seems quite obvious that talking to/persuading/eliciting appropriate knowledge out of AI's will be as nuanced, important, and as much of an acquired skill as doing the same with humans," Neal Khosla, whose X bio says he's the CEO of an AI startup, commented in response to Kilpatrick.
The OpenAI employee's views on prompt engineering come as researchers and AI experts alike seek new ways for users to communicate with ChatGPT in order to achieve the best results. The skill comes as ChatGPT users begin to incorporate the AI chatbot into their personal and professional lives.
A study published in November discovered that using emotional language like "This is very important to my career" when talking to ChatGPT leads to enhanced responses. According to AI experts, assigning ChatGPT a specific job and conversing with the chatbot in courteous, direct language can produce the best outcomes.
