Think Before You Prompt: A Guide to Critical AI Interaction

Author

Abstract

My infographic, “Think Before You Prompt: A Guide to Critical AI Interaction,” aims to help beginner and non-expert users of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to understand and approach prompt engineering as a deliberate and thoughtful writing process. My work is spurred by the idea that as GenAI becomes more prevalent in academic and everyday writing contexts, it is crucial to engage with AI tools in more intentional ways. One of the key arguments of my work is that prompt engineering, with its focus on crafting, evaluating, and refining prompts in a recursive manner, can be seen as a mirror to traditional writing processes (which are often conceptualized through steps like prewriting, writing, and rewriting). By framing prompt engineering through a rhetorical and process-oriented lens, my infographic encourages users to consider how their approach to providing information to GenAI technologies affects the quality of AI’s responses and the alignment of those responses with their own writing goals. My work employs three key sections—defining prompt engineering, prompt engineering as a recursive process, and the CLEAR Framework (a set of guiding principles for effective AI prompting)—to encourage productive GenAI prompting. I utilize visual and textual elements to persuade writers to frame AI as a collaborator in their writing processes, and the ultimate goal of this framing is to promote a more critical and intentional approach to human-GenAI collaboration in writing

Project: Think Before You Prompt: A Guide to Critical AI Interaction