I Took a Certification in AI. Here’s What It Taught Me About Prompt Engineering.

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the author's journey in pursuing a new certification in AI, with a focus on understanding and leveraging large language models (LLMs) through prompt engineering and advanced techniques. It covers topics such as the impact of AI on the tech industry, the capabilities of LLMs, and various methods for enhancing their performance, including prompt engineering, in-context learning, retrieval augmented generation, and fine-tuning.

🙋 Q&A

[01] Prompt Engineering and LLM Capabilities

1. What are the key capabilities of LLMs that the article discusses?

• LLMs are capable of performing a variety of tasks such as text generation, summarization, classification, and document understanding.
• LLMs can be prompted and even trained beyond their initial programming to become skilled at specific tasks, including those that require private knowledge or complex reasoning.

2. How can the "temperature" setting be used to adjust the creativity of an LLM's responses?

• Adjusting the temperature setting changes the probabilities of the words being selected, allowing for more creative and varied responses from the LLM.
• A lower temperature setting (e.g., 0) results in a more deterministic response, while a higher temperature setting (e.g., 0.9) flattens the probabilities, leading to more diverse and creative responses.

3. What is the difference between no-shot, few-shot, and chain-of-thought prompting?

• No-shot prompting involves a simple, concise query without any additional context or examples.
• Few-shot prompting provides the LLM with a few examples to demonstrate the desired output format or task.
• Chain-of-thought prompting breaks down complex problems into smaller steps, guiding the LLM through the reasoning process.

[02] Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and Fine-tuning

1. How does Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) work to extend an LLM's capabilities?

• RAG involves querying an external database or knowledge base to retrieve relevant information and appending it to the prompt, allowing the LLM to leverage additional context beyond its initial training.
• This is done by converting the documents in the knowledge base into numerical embeddings, which can then be efficiently matched to the user's query.

2. What is the purpose of fine-tuning an LLM, and how does it differ from prompt engineering?

• Fine-tuning allows the LLM's internal parameters to be modified by training it on a custom dataset, permanently changing the model's behavior.
• This is in contrast to prompt engineering, which does not modify the LLM's parameters but rather provides instructions and context to influence its responses.
• Fine-tuning is often used to implement safety restrictions or adapt the LLM to specific domains or tasks.