How to Communicate with AI

Last week, I was doing some research on prompt engineering.

Prompt engineering crystallized as a term in 2022. It refers to the skill of crafting “prompts” for AI. The more skilled you are at crafting AI prompts, the better (and more useful) the outputs will be. Now that we live and work daily with AI, prompt engineering has become a widely valuable skill.

Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT to define “prompt engineering.” Here’s what it said:

The part that stood out immediately to me:

Do you know what that sounds like?

Effective communication!

That leads me to the “big idea” I want to share today:

If you want to thrive at work, you need to learn how to communicate with AI just like you communicate with people.

AI is a “digital employee.” In the years ahead, we all will work with these “digital employees” just like we work with normal human employees. How effective we are at working with AI will depend on our ability to communicate with it.

Here’s a framework that will help. 

I call it the 3C Method.

1. Context

AI is as good as the context you give it. Imagine you’re bringing on a bright intern from Harvard this summer. What would you do in their first week at work? You would train them. You would get them up to speed on the business, your products and services, your customers, your quarterly and annual goals, your culture, what they will be working on, how their work directly impacts the productiveness and profitability of the business, etc. 

You need to do the same thing with AI.

2. Clarity

Once AI has context, it’s ready to increase your productivity and save you time and money. To do that, it needs clarity on its tasks. 

Go back to your Harvard intern. Once they’re trained, you put them on their first project. Do you say, “Do this project by next Friday”? No. 

You say, “Your first project is to gather, organize and analyze all customer reviews from the past 90 days. Bucket the reviews into themes and write a list of recommendations to help us improve our service delivery based on themes. Submit a first draft by next Friday.”

Your “AI employee” needs the same thing.

3. Coach

Once work is underway, you need to shift into coaching mode. Your Harvard intern submits the first draft of the project. What do you do? 

You ask questions to better understand their decisions. You ask questions to challenge their thinking. You give positive feedback on what you liked. You give constructive feedback on what could be improved. You help them determine next steps to execute on. Etc.

The same thing applies with AI.

The way we work is changing rapidly.

Just last week, I completed work in 3 hours with AI that would have taken me ~15 hours in the past. That’s an 80% reduction in time. I used the 3C Method to do it.

Through my training and advisory business, I help people and teams communicate more effectively with AI in order to save time and money.

If getting more skilled with AI is a priority for you and/or your team, I’d like to hear from you.

• What conversations are you having around AI?

• What challenges or confusion are you experiencing?

• How effective are people in your organization at using AI?

Reply to this email and let me know – I may be able to help.

Cheers,

Teddy