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Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

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Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#161

Post by Waterluvian »

iamwil wrote: post #9

Think of it more as "prompt-fu", akin to "google-fu"--or how to google. You do have to know how to talk to an LLM, and it will be important. But it's not so much engineering, as we come to think of it in software traditionally. I wouldn't get hung up on the name, but just see it for what it is--a bad name for something we'll need to learn to be effective. It won't go away entirely, but will be mitigated to be less im…

A great example of this hit me last week when a demo for prompting pixel art pointed out you need to date the video game you’re referencing. You might know you want “final fantasy 6 pixel art style” but there are many remakes of it.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#162

Post by didgeoridoo »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #160
iamwil wrote: post #9

Think of it more as "prompt-fu", akin to "google-fu"--or how to google. You do have to know how to talk to an LLM, and it will be important. But it's not so much engineering, as we come to think of it in software traditionally. I wouldn't get hung up on the name, but just see it for what it is--a bad name for something we'll need to learn to be effective. It won't go away entirely, but will be mitigated to be less im…

Next you're going to say social engineering isn't real engineering :P

I’m saving this one, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#163

Post by marcellus23 »

vimax wrote: post #158
marcellus23 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a totally unrelated argument. Plenty of "real" engineers work on weapons systems. Architects work on ultra luxury skyscrapers for Saudi businessmen. Civil engineers work on new highways that destroy poor neighborhoods. No one is talking about ethics here.

How is it unrelated if we’re talking about software engineering as a profession? Yes there are some SWEs working in engineering fields, but the majority are not classically “engineers”

Maybe you could explain how it's related? I feel like I did a good job of explaining how ethics makes no sense in this discussion in my above comment.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#164

Post by james-revisoai »

Prompt engineering made more sense before RLHF/instruct models.

Back then text just continued onwards, and many papers found ridiculous gains on conforming with intended output (and therefore properties of output) by finding a suitable widespread online format.

Example: I think all Question/Answer forums, and places like StackOverflow, used a certain format like 'Q:' - that worked much better for question content with high quality answers. One paper, "Ask me anything" showed that formulating tasks as questions-answers resulted in much more effective prompts: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.02441 - another for reasoning is the "Lets think things through step by step" example. It was a challenge to output JSON data with more than 3 correct keys, unless you finetuned.

However, the instruct models and recent 3.5/conversational RLHF are just so good at doing tasks, that such "engineering" - which supported/improved a wide base of prompts across domains and functionalities - broadly entirely stopped.

Now prompt engineering sounds so cool and was also used in the way of specific use cases back then, that everybody uses the term for prompts to get certain outputs. This however, is not really the same level of engineering and to some expert, reminiscent of old-school knowledge system finesse, that we saw before 2022.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#165

Post by ZephyrBlu »

throwaway675309 wrote: post #157
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a working control system doesn't take away the fact it requires skill though. It seems like people think that one day they will be able to give a vague prompt and generate exactly what they were looking for, which I don't believe will ever happen. It feels like there will always be some skill in navigating the model.

If by "some skill" you mean the basic ability to type vaguely coherent English, than I agree. If anything the recent generative art advancements coming out (Firefly, MJ v5) would seem to refute your point. There was a time when diffusion models require some level of knowledge and skill to use. To get high quality output, it was in your best interest to learn about the different types of samplers, upscalers, hyper net…

I've used MJ quite a lot. It's easy to create something. It's quite difficult to create a specific thing.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#166

Post by vimax »

marcellus23 wrote: post #163
vimax wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it unrelated if we’re talking about software engineering as a profession? Yes there are some SWEs working in engineering fields, but the majority are not classically “engineers”

Maybe you could explain how it's related? I feel like I did a good job of explaining how ethics makes no sense in this discussion in my above comment.

My original comment was that this list of engineering standards is not followed by most software engineering. You seem to be saying there are some that it can be applied ti, and I’m say those are in the minority.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#167

Post by Art9681 »

Communication is a highly valued skill that everyone thinks everyone else is bad at. But some people are clearly better than others. Describing a problem or abstracting a process into a prompt will become a highly valued skill that some people will be better at than others. I also think that it's not as simple as just writing a prompt and calling it engineering. If these jobs become commonplace in a professional capacity, I would assume that developing or being good at the tooling that will be built around LLMs will be part of it. The people that are really good at it will hook in their own systems such as LangChain, Microsoft Semantic Kernel, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#168

Post by yawnxyz »

intelVISA wrote: post #53
ravenstine wrote: post #43

Software engineering is also snake-oil. Yes, software can be engineered, but that's not what the vast majority of so-called software engineers are actually doing at their jobs. The title mostly exists to inflate the importance of a programmer with years of experience under their belt. In reality, most of them couldn't explain to you what engineering itself is, and their job primarily consists of duct-taping and build…

Most SWE is snake oil, take one look around and you'll see what I mean... React..? Golang? GUIs?! We stepped too far from The Truth (vim, ghc) and now we are all Oilers.

if we are the Oilers, who are the Flames?

Re: Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?

#170

Post by psychlops »

Veen wrote: post #39
psychlops wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a country charging fees to bless a word makes a profession more or less real.

You should rethink that whenever you drive under a bridge or get on a boat. The reason they collapse or sink so infrequently is largely because engineers are accredited and held responsible.

You have quite a dim view of humanity if you believe the only reason a bridge stays up or boat floats is due to engineers being anointed and threatened by some entity.
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