The future of prompt engineering—the art and science of commanding AI systems through natural language—could look very different than it does today.
That’s the conclusion of Marketing AI Institute founder/CEO Paul Roetzer in a recent LinkedIn post.
“How soon until we have a Prompt Copilot that helps users write far more effective and optimized generative AI prompts? Think of it as a prompting assistant that improves and expands your prompts as you type them.”
Such a system would have a significant impact on how we do prompt engineering today. It would also change how important and valuable prompt engineering is as a skill in business.
How should you be thinking about, and adapting to, the future of prompt engineering?
I spoke with Paul in Episode 41 of the Marketing AI Show to find out.
- Right now, prompts are a limiting factor for users of AI tools. “Your ability to get value from them is actually largely dependent upon your ability to develop a prompt,” says Roetzer. There’s plenty of useful guidance on how to create great prompts. But the simple fact is that the majority of people aren’t going to take (or have) the time to become truly great at prompt engineering.
- Which also limits the value of AI tools that require prompts. Thus, the value of generative AI companies is all dependent on the ability of users to properly prompt a system. Today, this is a major friction point.
- Expect some type of “prompt copilot” soon. Because of this, there’s a massive incentive for companies building these products to not have their users rely on being good at prompt engineering. So expect someone to build prompt copilots—or incorporate them into existing tools—soon. This would potentially be a system that can learn what a great prompt looks like and help you create one of your own through auto-completion or AI assistance. “It seems inevitable that it’s going to be baked into these applications and into the language models themselves,” says Roetzer.
- This will lead to skyrocketing usage of generative AI tools. If we remove the friction point of prompt engineering, many more people will realize the power of these tools far faster than they do today. When you can receive AI assistance to create expert prompts, you’ll see adoption rates of tools skyrocket.
- But you’ll also see employment impact, too. At the same time, the importance and value of being great at prompting will diminish. That includes being good at prompting because you possess the relevant expert professional skills to do it well, like knowing how to create great image generation prompts because you are an expert artist.
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