Riley Goodside: The Art and Craft of Prompt Engineering

Riley Goodside: The Art and Craft of Prompt Engineering

Author: Daniel Bashir June 1, 2023 Duration: 59:42

In episode 75 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Riley Goodside.

Riley is a Staff Prompt Engineer at Scale AI. Riley began posting GPT-3 prompt examples and screenshot demonstrations in 2022. He previously worked as a data scientist at OkCupid, Grindr, and CopyAI.

Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at editor@thegradient.pub

Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on Twitter

Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (01:37) Riley’s journey to becoming the first Staff Prompt Enginer

* (02:00) data science background in online dating industry

* (02:15) Sabbatical + catching up on LLM progress

* (04:00) AI Dungeon and first taste of GPT-3

* (05:10) Developing on codex, ideas about integrating codex with Jupyter Notebooks, start of posting on Twitter

* (08:30) “LLM ethnography”

* (09:12) The history of prompt engineering: in-context learning, Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)

* (10:20) Models used to be harder to talk to

* (10:45) The three eras

* (10:45) 1 - Pre-trained LM era—simple next-word predictors

* (12:54) 2 - Instruction tuning

* (16:13) 3 - RLHF and overcoming instruction tuning’s limitations

* (19:24) Prompting as subtractive sculpting, prompting and AI safety

* (21:17) Riley on RLHF and safety

* (24:55) Riley’s most interesting experiments and observations

* (25:50) Mode collapse in RLHF models

* (29:24) Prompting models with very long instructions

* (33:13) Explorations with regular expressions, chain-of-thought prompting styles

* (36:32) Theories of in-context learning and prompting, why certain prompts work well

* (42:20) Riley’s advice for writing better prompts

* (49:02) Debates over prompt engineering as a career, relevance of prompt engineers

* (58:55) Outro

Links:

* Riley’s Twitter and LinkedIn

* Talk: LLM Prompt Engineering and RLHF: History and Techniques



Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Hosted by Daniel Bashir, The Gradient: Perspectives on AI moves beyond surface-level headlines to explore the intricate machinery and human ideas shaping artificial intelligence. Each episode is built on a foundation of deep research, leading to conversations that are both technically substantive and broadly accessible. You'll hear from researchers, engineers, and philosophers who are actively building and critiquing our technological future, discussing not just how AI systems work, but the larger implications of their integration into society. This isn't about speculative hype; it's a grounded examination of real progress, persistent challenges, and ethical considerations from those on the front lines. The discussions peel back layers on topics like model architecture, policy, and the fundamental science behind the algorithms becoming part of our daily lives. For anyone curious about the substance behind the buzz-whether you have a technical background or are simply keen to understand a defining technology of our age-this podcast offers a crucial and thoughtful resource. Tune in for a consistently detailed and nuanced take that treats artificial intelligence with the complexity it deserves.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Gradient: Perspectives on AI
Podcast Episodes
Antoine Blondeau: Alpha Intelligence Capital and Investing in AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:34
In episode 78 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Antoine Blondeau.Antoine is a serial AI entrepreneur and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Alpha Intelligence Capital. He was chief executive at Dejima when…
Joon Park: Generative Agents and Human-Computer Interaction [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:21:25
In episode 77 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Joon Park.Joon is a third-year PhD student at Stanford, advised by Professors Michael Bernstein and Percy Liang. He designs, builds, and evaluates interactiv…
Christoffer Holmgård: AI for Video Games [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:06
In episode 76 of The Gradient Podcast, Andrey Kurenkov speaks to Dr Christoffer HolmgårdDr. Holmgård is a co-founder and the CEO of Modl.ai, which is building AI Engine for game development. Before starting the company,…
Talia Ringer: Formal Verification and Deep Learning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:45:35
In episode 74 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Talia Ringer.Professor Ringer is an Assistant Professor with the Programming Languages, Formal Methods, and Software Engineering group at the Unive…
Brigham Hyde: AI for Clinical Decision-Making [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:43
In episode 72 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Brigham Hyde.Brigham is Co-Founder and CEO of Atropos Health. Prior to Atropos, he served as President of Data and Analytics at Eversana, a life sciences com…
Scott Aaronson: Against AI Doomerism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:32
In episode 72 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Scott Aaronson. Scott is the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and director of its Quantum Inf…
Ted Underwood: Machine Learning and the Literary Imagination [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:43:59
In episode 71 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Ted Underwood.Ted is a professor in the School of Information Sciences with an appointment in the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urba…
Irene Solaiman: AI Policy and Social Impact [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:12:11
In episode 70 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Irene Solaiman.Irene is an expert in AI safety and policy and the Policy Director at HuggingFace, where she conducts social impact research and develops publ…
Drago Anguelov: Waymo and Autonomous Vehicles [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:23
In episode 69 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Drago Anguelov.Drago is currently a Distinguished Scientist and Head of Research at Waymo, where he joined in 2018. Earlier, he spent eight years at Google w…
Joanna Bryson: The Problems of Cognition [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:05
In episode 68 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Professor Joanna Bryson.Professor Bryson is Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School, where her research focuses on the impact of technology o…