Guide to Using AI: An Essential Assistant for Study and Work

On March 15, 2023, ChatGPT-4 was officially released, capable of reading text, recognizing images, and generating textual results, which caused a stir on social media upon its release.

Today, a year and a half later, AI large language models have become powerful assistants in our learning, work, and innovation. Text generation AI models like ChatGPT-4.0, Wenxin Yiyan, Tongyi Qianwen, and iFlytek Spark have emerged like mushrooms after rain, with major internet companies rushing in with capital and technology, changing the landscape and competing fiercely.

However, while breakthroughs are continually made in academia, the artificial intelligence applications that have entered the market still have their own usage thresholds.

Have you ever felt that sometimes conversations with it are like scratching an itch through a boot, making it difficult to convey your intentions accurately? Or that the generated content is obscure, stylistically different, or even fabricates data, confusing cause and effect?

Although current AI models can understand various languages, how to better issue commands to AI remains a topic worth exploring in current applications.

Text generation AI models are trained on data from the internet, which allows AI to possess all the knowledge that humans have publicly published online.

The content production mode of AI predicts the next possible word, which means AI tends to generate more common, moderate, and easily searchable text content, resulting in lower information density and a lack of relevant professional knowledge.

Therefore, when you need to generate content in a specific field, you can ask the AI model to play the role of an expert in that field.

When role-playing, AI will output information that is more aligned with its identity, and the produced text will have more professionalism and information density.

For example

Taking Wenxin Yiyan as an example, when you need a marketing plan, you can ask it to play the role of a senior marketing consultant and provide suggestions from an expert’s perspective.

Here, “identity” does not refer to your demographic indicators; your gender, age, and residence do not significantly affect the generated text content. What needs to be conveyed to AI is your “cognitive level.”

Cognitive level refers to the ability to process information, including judgment ability, thinking ability, and knowledge reserve.When you inform the AI model of your identity information, AI can output text content that matches your cognitive level.

For example

When using AI models for text creation, a common issue is that the output length may be uncontrollable; sometimes it is too lengthy, and other times it is too brief. To manage and utilize AI-generated text more effectively, we can adopt a strategy of limiting text length.

By setting clear text length requirements, the AI model will focus more on core information when generating content, avoiding unnecessary verbosity or omission of key details. This can enhance reading efficiency and ensure that the generated content is more concise and targeted.

For example

To enhance the logic and depth of AI-generated text, we can adopt a method of guiding AI to think step by step. This method is similar to the step-by-step reasoning process that humans use to solve problems, by posing a series of logically connected questions or instructions to AI, guiding it to think deeply and construct content.

First, clarify your goal or topic and break it down into several key sub-questions or steps.

Then, sequentially ask AI for requests based on these sub-questions or steps, allowing it to focus on solving a specific problem or generating a part of the content at each stage.

For example

For instance, when writing a paper on the trends in artificial intelligence development, you can first ask AI to summarize the main technologies and applications in the current AI field, and then gradually guide it to analyze the challenges these technologies face, potential solutions, and future development directions.

At each stage, you can refine the questions or make new requests based on AI’s output, to guide it to think and explore more deeply.

In this rapidly evolving era of AI technology, mastering how to efficiently utilize AI tools has become key to enhancing learning and work efficiency.

Through the sharing of techniques in this article, we have learned how to help AI understand our needs more accurately, from role-playing to informing cognitive levels, to precise control of text length, and guiding AI to think step by step, each step aims to unlock AI’s maximum potential.

AI large language models are akin to the brush of the Neolithic era, the movable type printing of the Han dynasty, and the typewriter of the early 19th century, helping people produce content and express themselves better.Effective communication is the key to unlocking the power of AI; by mastering these techniques, you will be able to make AI a true assistant in your learning and work.

The future is here; let us embrace the infinite possibilities brought by AI with a more open mindset.