Prompt like a Meta Engineer

Meta engineers share 6 prompting tips to get the best results from Llama 2

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Prompt Like a Pro: Six Tips To Make the Most of Llama 2

Your LinkedIn feeds are inundated with the forecasts of an impending doom. 

Experts are convinced that AI will replace you in your full-time job. 

But a part of you casts a shadow on this sort of wishful thinking. You are basing this on your experiments with AI. These have proven to be unhelpful. 

You are not wrong. Perhaps you are a great marketeer or writer who cannot overlook the fluff in AI-generated responses. 

In my experience, AI can never perform 100% of any job. But I’ll also admit that it can save you from much of the grunt work before D-day (read product launches or nerve-wracking investor pitches.)

That’s why we revisit six prompting tips Meta engineers shared to get the best results from Llama 2, its flagship open-source model. 

Let’s dive in  

#1 | Instruct Explicitly

It may seem a no-brainer, but we urge you to avoid lazy prompting. 

Rule of thumb: Explicit instructions produce better results than open-ended prompts. Specificity is key. Use details on the length of output and character count. 

Example 

Generic: Summarise this document 

Better: “As a startup founder preparing for an investor pitch, summarize the growth and revenue projections in this business plan in 300 words, highlighting key financial metrics and market expansion strategies."

Is the response still not up to the mark? Use formatting instructions (bullet points) or direct the model to adjust technical complexity. 

#2 | Role Prompting

Rule of thumb: Assign the model a specific role for clear responses. 

Generic: “What are the pros and cons of scaling a business?”

Better: "You are a growth strategist advising a founder looking to scale their SaaS company beyond the initial 1,000 customers. Outline the pros and cons of scaling with limited cash flow and expanding into new markets.”

#3 | Chain-of-Thought Prompting 

Rule of thumb: Encourage the model to think step-by-step can improve its reasoning drastically. Chain-of-thought (CoT) prompting ensures processes information to churn out the best possible helpful answer. 

Generic: “Compare the following: bootstrapping or raising venture capital.”

Better: "Which is better for scaling a B2B SaaS startup: bootstrapping or raising venture capital? Let’s break this down step-by-step, considering factors like equity, growth speed, and long-term control of the company."

#4 | Retrieval-Augmented Generation 

Rule of thumb: Use external data sources to improve relevance. 

Example: “Create a social media strategy for my startup by analysing engagement data [insert preferred timeline], including follower growth and top-performing posts. Incorporate competitor analysis and industry trends to suggest the best platforms and content types for the next quarter.”

#5 | Self-Consistency 

Remember: Even while employing some of Meta’s prompting tricks, one SINGLE generation could produce incorrect results ‘self-consistency’ ensures the system regularly checks its own work to improve. 

Example: "Analyze the most successful marketing channels for our product launch. Then identify which channel delivered the best ROI and explain why it performed better than the others."

This encourages the model to review multiple options and assess the most valuable one, similar to how founders analyze business decisions.

#6) Limiting Extraneous Tokens 

Rule of thumb: To avoid irrelevant information, combine rules with role prompts and clear instructions. 

Generic: “What is product-market fit?” 

Better: “Provide a concise explanation of product-market fit, specifically focusing on the key indicators for a SaaS startup looking to scale."

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