Receive the Best Output from ChatGPT: How to Get the Best Response from ChatGPT?
If you’re here, you’re probably wondering how you can receive relevant answers whenever you type a search query in ChatGPT, which often gives the user something different from what they want. Well, that is exactly what will be explored in this blog post! We will show you how you can get relevant results from ChatGPT, or even another Generative AI model.
What Key Thing Changes your Entire Response?
What is your only interaction with ChatGPT? The prompt you give it. Therefore, your prompt needs to contain details that ChatGPT can use to understand what you want, how you want it, and what extra information you’re giving it so that it can formulate a response meeting your demands.
Your job is to tell ChatGPT what you already know and what you want to find out. ChatGPT’s job is to identify the patterns between the data provided and its prior knowledge (which is all the data that has been fed into it) in order to answer the question asked.
What is mentioned above is the most basic way to describe how ChatGPT formulates a response. Obviously, there are different approaches for different types of prompts, like solving a math problem vs. writing a story. Either way, however, your prompt determines (mostly!) whether you get the answer you wanted or not.
It should be noted that ChatGPT isn’t 100% correct and has lots of flaws, so it isn’t entirely in your hands if you get a different answer than the one you were expecting. But you can definitely influence the chance of you getting a relevant response by creating a good prompt!
In order to ensure that you get the answer you want, you can take the steps outlined below on prompt formulation.
Steps for Creating a Good Prompt
The steps outlined below aren’t the only ones that can help you get the best response from ChatGPT, but they are common ones that are certainly useful, so see if they can help you out!
Step 1: Have a Clear Idea
You should have clarity in your mind of the question and the expected result as an answer. Your whole prompt will be based on this idea, so make sure that your ask is clear.
Step 2: Make the Question Specific
Your question should be specific enough so that ChatGPT is able to narrow its focus to give you the response you need instead of giving basic level summaries, which it will likely do if you ask it something too broad or vague.
Step 3: Articulating the Answer Type
The type of answer you want should be mentioned, as that is essential to making sure you get the response you want. If ChatGPT gives you a one-word answer when you want a paragraph response, then it means you have not communicated your question clearly. Whether a prompt is too specific depends on whether you would like a clear right/wrong or correct answer vs. an open-minded response such as an essay.
Step 4: Provide any Necessary Context
If ChatGPT is lacking some necessary context required to answer your question correctly/to its full extent, then it needs to know that information it needs in order to make that decision. Without that essential information, the response will be incomplete and possibly inaccurate. That being said, remember not to give any sensitive or personal details, as that can breach your privacy.
Step 5: Check for Any Ambiguity
You don’t want ChatGPT to mistake your prompt for something else. This can be found in your language, choice of words, spelling or grammar, so make sure all the words in your prompt together ask what you want to ask, and not something else that ChatGPT can interpret.
Step 6: Break the Prompt Down
Look over your prompt to make sure you aren’t asking more than one question, especially if the questions aren’t relevant. If you ask more than one question, then you can get irrelevant responses so the best way to avoid that would be to ask each question separately.
Step 7: Try it Multiple Times
You can always tweak the prompt and ask ChatGPT again if you don’t get the response you want! You are not limited to only one go, so feel free to edit the prompt to get more relevant results.
This isn’t magic: it is unlikely that you will get a perfect answer on your first try. Keep trying, though, because eventually you will be able to get the response you want like a pro. By tweaking your prompt little by little, you can trigger the answer you want. Creating a good prompt is a skill that takes time but has sweet rewards.
A Short Demo Showing How to Get the Best Response from ChatGPT
The best way to illustrate everything mentioned above would be in the form of a demo, so we tested these strategies out when asking ChatGPT for some information.
Broad Language vs. Specificity
The first prompt will be a basic draft with no specificity, so we can later see how making a specific prompt changes the output.
Prompt: Give me a one-sentence summary of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Response: Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play about two young lovers from feuding families who take their own lives in a series of misunderstandings and misfortunes.
The answer does not mention the characters by name, and does not connect how them being from feuding families results in their tragic endings. It is a very broad summary.
Now, we will make it a little more specific so ChatGPT knows exactly what we are looking for.
Prompt: Give me a one-sentence summary that includes which characters are involved in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Response: Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play about the love affair between Romeo, a Montague, and Juliet, a Capulet, whose families' long-standing feud drives them to take their own lives.
In this answer, we get some more details about who the characters actually are, which is useful if we want that in a summary. The input being specific leads to the output being specific.
No Background vs. Necessary Context Given
The first prompt will be one where there is no background provided so ChatGPT is left to figure out the answer without relevant information so that the effect on the answer can be seen.
Prompt: Which friend should I ask for help on my math homework?
Abridged Response: It would be best to ask a friend who is good at math and has a strong understanding of the topics you need help with.
Since no information is provided on who the friends are, ChatGPT has no choice but to give a generic answer.
In the second prompt, some information on a few friends will be provided so that ChatGPT has relevant context.
Prompt: My friend Jay is good at painting. My friend Holly is good at finance. Who should I ask for help on my math homework?
Abridged Response: While both Jay and Holly have valuable skills, it's more likely that Holly would be better suited to help you with your math homework since finance often involves a lot of mathematical calculations and concepts.
When the information needed is provided, ChatGPT is able to give you an answer closer to what you are looking for, rather than a simple response.
Final Thoughts
We hope that all the suggestions mentioned above will help you the next time you have a question for ChatGPT. Remember, prompt formulation is at the core of getting the answer you want, so make sure your prompt follows the steps above!
What has been listed is not a comprehensive list of everything you can do to improve the quality of ChatGPT’s generation, but it definitely highlights some of the key aspects of a good prompt.
So with that, good luck on your future ChatGPT endeavors!
About Inspirit AI
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