How To Prompt ChatGPT

AI For Procurement Series - Part 2  

Learn how to improve your results with ChatGPT using 5 best practices.

The AI For Procurement Series  explains artificial intelligence topics in brief, concise articles tailored for procurement professionals.

In this second article we focus on prompts. Prompts are how we communicate with large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3.5 or GPT-4. In this article we focus on the free version of ChatGPT.

A prompt has three components: System Instructions, Context, and Query.

The free version of ChatGPT interfaces to GPT3.5, does not allow for modifications to the System Instructions, and does not have a way to add Context (except for the rather limited ability to paste text into the message box).

That leaves the query, the part we type into ChatGPT. At its most basic, the query is just a question. But question asking is actually a poor use of ChatGPT and not the best way to frame a query, which leads us to our first best practice.

Best Practice #1 – Don’t ask ChatGPT, instruct ChatGPT.

For example don’t ask, "What is a surface mount component?". It is much better to instruct, "Please tell me what a surface mount component is". In simple queries like this it won’t matter much, but the more complex the query the more it will make a difference. A more complex query might be, “Please act as a SMT Engineer and describe surface mount components including what they are used for, the advantages and disadvantages, and any other interesting facts”.  If you try these prompts now you will see you get a vastly improved response with the last prompt.

Notice the phrasing, “Please act as a …”. This is a very common and very successful strategy, but there is a subtly that suggests our next best practice.

Best Practice #2 – Talk with ChatGPT as you would a person

While ChatGPT is not a person, it is also not a computer in the sense we are accustomed to. The “Chat” from ChatGPT is a reference to its ability to conduct a conversation. When you receive responses from ChatGPT you can keep asking follow up questions and ChatGPT will remember the entire conversation, just like a person. So talk to it that way!

You may be surprised at how difficult it is to remember this best practice, and at how important it can be. If you asked a real life SMT Engineer, “What is a surface mount component?”, what kind of response do you think you would get?  Would you get an answer, or would you get a question? 

Best Practice #3 – Ask ChatGPT what it needs

This is an excellent strategy, just add, “Do you have any questions before proceeding?” to the end of your query. This is especially helpful for complex queries.

A twist on this best practice is to ask ChatGPT to generate the questions. Assume you are new to buying electronic components and don’t know what “surface mount component” means or even where to begin. You can write your query like this: “Please act as a Senior Buyer of electronic components. I am new to purchasing and I need to learn about ‘surface mount component’, what questions should I ask?” Try this prompt yourself and you’ll see you get a very different response.

Another twist is to ask ChatGPT to write the prompt for you. In this case it is not acting in a role, so you might say: “I am new to purchasing electronic components and don’t know what ‘surface mount component’ means, please write me a prompt I can use to learn what I need to know as a buyer.” Try this yourself, then enter the query it suggests. In our test ChatGPT replied to the query it wrote by beginning “That’s an excellent prompt!”.  Maybe it does have a sense of humor.

We started with, “What is a surface mount component?” and have now explored a range of queries which elicit very different responses. This points to the importance of our next best practice.

Best Practice #4 – Rephrase, rephrase, rephrase.

If you don’t get the answer you wanted, sometimes it’s because of how you asked the question. If you ask a person a question and their answer suggested they didn’t fully understand what you want, you would likely rephrase the question. In our working example, the query, “What is a surface mount component?” resulted in a terse and sub-optimal response, so we rephrased it to better explain the question and what we needed.

By rephrasing we can often get a result we need. But sometimes ChatGPT is not capable and just can’t do it, which can be frustrating. This leads to our last best practice.

Best Practice #5 – Focus on what ChatGPT can do, not on what it can’t do.

If you asked the accounting department, “What is a surface mount component?” and you got a poor answer, would you conclude the accounting department is worthless? Of course not. ChatGPT is the fastest application in history to reach 100 million users because of what it can do, not because of what it’s bad at. Use these best practices to help discover what it can do for you.

A good next step is to download our 5 Fun Prompts for ChatGPT and try them on the free version of ChatGPT With these prompts you can turn ChatGPT into a negotiation simulator and match wits with the determined disty salesman Simon. Or assume the role of Commodity Manager and see how you react to the challenges ChatGPT comes up. Each of the 5 prompts will result in a score and evaluation, good luck!