Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil? • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by psychlops » Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 11:44 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #38

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.

It does however give it better control, a fixed threshold in terms of training that applicants should pass, and more oversight. Those are the important parts, being real or not is irrelevant. Snake-oil selling is also a very real profession.

Good points. OP is arguing for regulations. Regulations failed egregiously all over in the Turkey earthquake and illustrate that they are not a silver bullet.

Setting a minimum threshold for competence makes sense, but when it becomes encoded into a legal system the result frequently becomes a way to enrich incumbents.

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

#172

Post by agentultra » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

cjbprime wrote: post #117

agentultra wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. It’s a protected term in Canada and they have software engineers.

Are you saying that software engineers in Canada are P. Eng licensed? (If not, then your example is one where software engineers are misusing the protected term, but as they usually do not set up shop and mislead the general public into thinking they are certified, which would be the activity the protection is designed to thwart, the protection is rarely enforced.)

It's protected. And they've started going after people in recent years, and winning, for using the term, "software engineer."

https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/2022-08/2022-...

There are many folks in certain provinces arguing against regulation as, they claim, it makes it difficult for workers to compete in a global market where the term is common.

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

#173

Post by mathgladiator » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 12:39 AM UTC

It's like learning the limits of the tech. For example, the evening I was messing around and asked it to give the philosophy of Conan and what makes life best. It pulled the right quote from the movie and then went on the deep end telling about how violence is bad and not fit for the real world.

For me, prompt engineering was about getting it to stop moralizing and adding trigger warnings.

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

#174

Post by slowhadoken » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 12:46 AM UTC

grepfru_it wrote: post #123

slowhadoken wrote: post #107

Calling yourself a Prompt Engineer makes me think you don’t know college math and computer science. Prompt Engineer sounds like a Subway employee calling themselves a sandwich artist.

Welcome to Clown World! Where things that should not be are, and things that should are not. I first noticed CW when someone reached out to me during COVID and their title was "Professional LinkedIn Specialist". In hindsight, it was probably when people were making gobs of funny money from running their GPU 24x7 My advice? Don't fight it, accept it and embrace the change. Don't sell yourself short, you only need to p…

Yeah people are always trying to celebrate laziness and mediocrity.

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

#175

Post by cyanydeez » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 12:49 AM UTC

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…

Google Fi no long works. It's closer to prompt engineering.

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

#176

Post by hyperliner » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 1:13 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #138

enraged_camel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refer to myself as a software developer, but also intensely dislike the gatekeeping around the term “engineer”.

I call myself a programmer. Nothing more, nothing less. While I don't necessarily go out of my way to gatekeep, I find 'engineer' pretty cringy, and 'architect' makes my eyes roll out of my head. What's next, Software Physician?

[dead]

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

#177

Post by roflyear » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

vimax wrote: post #105

ulrashida wrote: post #102

Professional engineers are typically: * Regulated by a profession and associated legislation * Work first to ensure the safety and welfare of the public * Perform only within their area of competence * Act as faithful agents or trustees for their clients * Avoid deception and represent matters in an objective and truthful manner * Invest in continuous professional development * Can be subject to penalties for malprac…

Hard to apply those to software engineering as well.

I disagree, I think 1-2 are not really applicable, but SWE has some stuff other engineering fields don't have, either.

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

#178

Post by sam0x17 » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 1:43 AM UTC

I mean what is engineering though but trying to understand the unknown and come up with rules of thumb that work in practice

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

#179

Post by TapWaterBandit » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

jcfrei wrote: post #143

voidhorse wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, pretty much this. Only a subset of the actual activity that falls under the umbrella of "software engineering" could be called engineering in the traditional sense. The engineers working on aviation software and other low-level, real-time, performance critical systems probably need to use quite a bit of maths and are closest to doing what we traditionally consider engineering. All those teams working on web app…

Thanks for reminding us that there are only a few real engineering professions. Reminds me of the Hemingway quote that there only three real sports: Motorracing, mountaineering and bull fighting - the rest are just games. No seriously that kind of gate keeping is just ridiculous.

Out of curiosity, what is your definition of "engineering" and "engineer"?

Genuine question, I am not an engineer nor in any sort of role that could plausibly be considered engineering.

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

#180

Post by kazinator » Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 1:48 AM UTC

It is pure, unadulterated snake oil. You cannot create a prompt or sequence of prompts such that you can substitute some variable data into it, to generate responses of predictable with the modified prompts. GPT4 isn't promoted as offering that capability. The output of each chat must be evaluated on a case by case basis for its quality and suitability.

If you want repeatable results, you get GPT4 to write you code. Then use that code. If you run into cases it doesn't handle, or have new ones, then you can revise the code, perhaps with the help of the AI once again.

The problem is, that the bullshit artists out there want repeatable results in areas for which it can't write you working code. For instance, a problem like taking a textual product description and producing a glib advertisement.

They want to be able to write a prompt where you can just substitute different product descriptions and have quality ads come out that nobody has to proofread (so they can be immediately served), just by "turning a crank".