Chatted with a coder at a coffee shop who changed how I see AI assistants

I was waiting for my latte last Tuesday and this guy next to me started talking about how he trains small language models for his family business. He said most people treat AI like a magic box instead of a tool you have to tune like a guitar. Has anyone else found that tweaking prompts gives way better results than just asking a vague question?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordancoleman27d ago

Read somewhere that the key is being super specific with your requests, like telling it to pretend to be a grumpy chef or something specific like that. It really does make a huge difference lol.

brooke7127d ago

Does giving it a FULL backstory really work that well? I tried the grumpy chef thing with a recipe idea and it gave me this ridiculous overcomplicated dish, but when I told it "you're a stressed out college student trying to cook ramen with only a microwave" it actually gave me REAL shortcuts and hacks. The trick is making the persona match the vibe of what you actually want, not just picking a funny character. Also telling it to "explain like I'm 12" has saved me SO much headache when dealing with technical stuff.