Illuminating Paths -
Welcome, Reader,
I went to my first Spanish concert with my wife and sister-in-law over the weekend. It was fun watching them dance and sing along to the music. I could identify a few words, and mostly just watched the concert.
It was definitely a new cultural experience for me! I saw that Hispanics/Latinos love their music and love to dance! I have also learned that Latinos are quite passionate about soccer.
With the COPA America tournament starting we will be watching all of Colombia's games! Yesterday's game was fun to watch! I enjoy watching my family's reactions as they cheered or winced on every play!
Let's explore today's edition!
Overview of Today's Issue:
- Content to Context
- Concise AI Responses
- New Prompt Idea
- Question of the Week
Content to Context
A recent paper published by the University of Pennsylvania explored the most effective interventions for changing people's behaviors. The researchers discovered that interventions focusing on the actions people take, rather than the knowledge they acquire, are the most successful.
Dr. Hardman, who wrote a review of the paper, emphasized this shift in perspective, stating,
For learning professionals, this behavioural research confirms conclusively the importance of shifting away from focusing on the design of content to a focus on the design of context.
Dr. Hardman also included several AI prompts you can use to create better learning interventions.
Concise AI Responses
Have you ever noticed how AI can be excessively wordy in its responses? Researchers from John Hopkins University have found an interesting solution. By adding "be concise" to a chain-of-thought (CoT) prompt, the response length can be reduced by almost 50%, cutting API costs by around 22%, all without sacrificing quality.
A CoT prompt, as defined by the researchers, is "a prompt engineering technique that instructs the LLM to reason through a problem in a step-by-step manner."
If you find that your AI-generated content is too wordy, try adding "be concise" to your CoT prompt.
It's fascinating to see how small changes in phrasing can lead to substantial improvements in AI responses. In a previous edition, I wrote about other research that identified additional phrases to enhance AI prompts.
New Prompt Idea
I attended a webinar about AI and L&D last week and I learned about a new prompt idea that I wished I had thought of. The prompt is:
What would have been the prompt to get me this output the first time?
The presenter shared her approach to conversing with the AI, going back and forth until she got the desired result. But she didn't stop there. She then asked the AI to give her the prompt that would have given her the desired result the first time.
Genius.
Curious, I tried it on an old chat where it took several exchanges to get the information I needed. When I asked the AI for the optimal prompt, it provided a detailed one that, when used, gave me the exact information I wanted in the preferred format on the first attempt.
If you're working with an AI and like the result it eventually gave you, but it took some back and forth, try out this prompt and let me know what you think!
Question of the Week
What was the most memorable cultural experience you've had?
Bonus!
If you haven't played around with AI music generators, you're missing out!
I asked Suno to make this song about the pool finally being open, summer, family, and one or two other things.
I tried about 5 different prompts and music styles/genres before I ended up with this one I liked.
https://suno.com/song/c82fc530-3e05-450d-9bbb-6cb6a4743ab3
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Thank you for reading Illuminating Paths. I hope something in this edition starts a new journey for you.
All the best,
Jason Rajcok
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