I'm quoted a couple of times in this piece by @drewharwell... | Simon Willison

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I'm quoted a couple of times in this piece by @drewharwell about prompt engineering https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/25/prompt-engineers-techs-next-big-job/

Quite pleased that I got "if you mispronounce them, demons come to eat you" in the Washington Post :)

"It's just a crazy way of working with computers, and yet the things it lets you do are completely miraculous," said Simon Willison, a British programmer who has studied prompt engineering. "I've been a software engineer for 20 years, and it's always been the same: you write code and the computer does exactly what you tell it to do. With prompting, you get none of that. The people who built the language models can't even tell you what it's going to do."
"There are people who belittle prompt engineers, saying, 'Oh lord, you can get paid for typing things into a box," Willison added. "But these things lie to you. They mislead you. They pull you down false paths to waste time on things that don't work. You're casting spells - and, like in fictional magic, nobody understands how the spells work and, if you mispronounce them, demons come to eat you."

Like 25 Feb 2023 at 13:57 | Open on fedi.simonwillison.net

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Andrew 🄵 Lyons

@simon @drewharwell journalists live for quotes like that. Or they should.

25 Feb 2023 at 14:03 | Open on mastodon.social