Search engines give you a list of results. Chatbots answer in a stream of one result. Google will be able to serve you with exactly what you want, but with only one result, the bot’s answer. Many people don’t specify the options for results:
- Ask for a chatbot to take on a role, e.g. “you are a rocket scientist, explain…”
- Give context information to go with the request.
- Give x number of examples. The capabilities of chatbots are there for the using, but I think users need to learn how to prompt better in the pursuit of the diversity of answers. A reasoning engine, like ChatGPT, Claude, Bing Copilot, understands your question rather than just giving you rankings. Taking advantage of this difference–prompt engineering–must be a taught skill. Bingchat unites a search engine with a reasoning engine: you get the conversation with clickable sources. It’s a good sign of what is coming.
- Ask for competing answers, i.e. answer in the debate style with points for and against.
- Ask for an answer using an analogy.
- Ask for the bot to be creative, ideate, brainstorm, give ideas.
- Ask for a summary of text you input into the reasoning engine when desired.
A consideration is to be wary of the factuality of the reasoning engine’s response since it can be wrong. It can certainly sound convincing, but don’t trust everything you see or hear.
Where will your prompt take you?