How should you properly communicate with AI and set tasks for it?

 

Here are some tips from the Pitch Avatar team to help you use AI-based tools more effectively.

According to our observations, there are plenty of users who, to one degree or another, are disappointed by their experience of working with AI. In our opinion, this is primarily due to misconceptions about the capabilities of the tools that we commonly include in the phrase “artificial intelligence.” That is why we will voice our first and most important piece of advice right away:

Do not "humanize" AI and do not attribute superpowers to it.

Always remember that you are dealing with a tool. Many people, without realizing it, begin to imagine AI as either human or a robot from a work of science fiction (and not very speculative science fiction). Apparently, this is due to the fact that many AIs can maintain a dialog and receive tasks in a free-form manner. In fact, in terms of creative thinking, originality, multitasking, and the ability to make non-standard decisions, current AIs are far from being human. In fact, they are not even similar to the robots featured in Star Wars or Westworld. Their strength is their ability to quickly search, process, and compile large amounts of information, and their ability to create variations on a large number of samples. But no more than that. 

 

Once you realize, accept, and commit this fact to memory, you can proceed to the rest of our tips, which we hope will help you use AI tools with maximum efficiency.

 

• Study the user manual or take the suggested training. Many people start using AI tools right off the bat, ignoring guides and tutorials. Most people are guided by the motto: “We’ll figure it out as we go.” Quite often this approach does not save time, but has quite the opposite effect. As a rule, developers’ instructions contain important information about the product’s functionality and limitations. With their help, you can avoid situations where you assign a task to an AI tool that it cannot cope with.

 

• In your instructional communication with AI, use ordinary or, in other words, classic language. Try to avoid any form of slang, ambiguity, innuendo, jokes, and the like. In some cases, AI will simply not understand what you want it to do. Or, worse, it will misunderstand your instructions. Yes, of course, most AI solutions are trained to recognize spoken language with different variations. And in a conversation that is simply meant to be amusing, it is quite possible to communicate with AI in any style. But when you are working, it is better to limit yourself to generally accepted linguistic norms. 

 

• Formulate tasks clearly, concisely, unambiguously, and briefly. General and/or long formulations with many additions, clarifications, and exceptions are some of the most commonly made mistakes when working with AI. Humans find it difficult to work with tasks set in this way, and so do machines. The reason behind this is that AI learns, first of all, from samples. And the further your query strays from those samples, the worse the AI’s result becomes. Before turning to AI, think about exactly what you want. After that, formulate your wish in a single sentence. The shorter, simpler, and more specific it is, the better. Some find it helpful to imagine that you are giving a task to a child.

 

• Be respectful. Or, at least, stick to a neutral communication style. This is the format that artificial intelligence understands best, because it is most basic. When working with an AI, never swear. Do not use malicious irony or sarcasm. AI is not a person, so you cannot offend it or motivate it to work better with insults. Most likely, it will respond with a standard apology, but it will not affect the quality of its work. You’ll just be wasting your time. Besides, a number of AI solutions improve their communication style by learning from dialogs with users. Accordingly, developers must struggle to prevent their product from using inappropriate words and expressions that it picks up from impolite interlocutors. 

 

• Always check the results of an AI’s work. Accept as a fact that AI-based tools are capable of making mistakes. The “Copy-Paste-Forget” approach does not work the same way with AI as it does with humans. The most serious problem, of course, is “machine hallucinations,” or “machine delusions”. These terms are typically used to refer to a situation where an AI, in an effort to solve a user’s problem, simply “makes up” realistic-looking information. In addition, AI-generated text often has to be revised from the original result to correct its style, edit images (e.g., remove unnecessary details), complete slideshows or video sequences in presentations, and so on and so forth. In other words – in most cases, the results produced by AI on request are nothing more than a basis for additional work and refinement. While they are capable of speeding your work processes up, AI-based tools cannot completely replace humans.

 

• Be prepared for the possibility that non-AI can’t do the job. Artificial intelligence is not an omnipotent and omniscient super worker or a silver bullet. It may well hit a dead end when working with your request. For example, it may not find the information you are interested in. Therefore, you should not rely on it completely. Always have a plan B in place. One such plan B would be allowing enough time to do the job you wanted to assign to the AI yourself in the event that you do not obtain satisfactory results from the AI. 

 

In the place of a conclusion, let’s give one more piece of advice:

Practice.

This advice seems obvious. But hand on heart, let’s be honest – we quite often rely on the fact that the necessary experience will come as we go along. In the case of AI, it’s hard to recognize this approach as the right one. AI-based tools are complex and multifaceted. It takes time to learn their capabilities and to master interacting with AI tools in a way that best meets your professional requirements. Fortunately, freely interacting with AI is a very interesting endeavor. No less exciting than, say, playing video games. So we strongly recommend that you experiment with AI as much as possible. Use AI not only for work tasks, but also for everyday household chores, hobbies, and other non-work uses. 

Good luck, success, and high incomes to everyone!

----------

Source: Pitch Avatar Blog