Incorporating external context

ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers

Fouad Trad

Machine Learning Engineer

The need for external context

Pre-trained language models recognize information they are trained on
Need to provide more context
More accuracy and effectiveness

Icon representing a chatbot on a mobile phone.

Lack of information in LLMs

Knowledge cut-off

system_prompt = "Act as a financial expert that knows about the latest trends."

user_prompt = "What are the top financial trends in 2023?"

print(get_response(system_prompt, user_prompt))

I apologize for any inconvenience, but as of my last knowledge update in 
September 2021, I don't have information about financial trends in 2023.

Lack of information in LLMs

Requested non-public information

system_prompt = "Act as a study buddy that helps me with my studies to succeed 
in exams."


user_prompt = "What is the name of my favorite instructor?"

print(get_response(system_prompt, user_prompt))

I don't have personal information about you, including the name of your 
favorite instructor.

How to give extra information?

Sample previous conversations
System's prompt

Icon showing two message dialog boxes to reflect a conversational aspect.

Sample conversations

Guide model to answer specific questions

response = client.chat.completions.create(
  model="gpt-3.5-turbo",
  messages=[{"role": "system",
             "content": "You are a customer service chatbot that responds to user queries in a gentle way"},

            {"role": "user",
             "content": "What services do you offer?"},

           {"role": "assistant",
             "content": "We provide services for web application development, mobile app development, and 
            custom software solutions."},

           {"role": "user",
             "content": "How many services do you have?"}])

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

We have 3 services including web application development, mobile app development, and custom software solutions.

Disadvantage: might need a lot of samples

System prompt

Includes required context for chatbot answers

services = "ABC Tech Solutions, a leading IT company, offers a range of services: 
application development, mobile app development, and custom software solutions."

system_prompt = f"""You are a customer service chatbot that responds to user 
queries in a gentle way. Some information about our services are delimited by 
triple backticks.
```{services}```"""

user_prompt = "How many services do you offer?"
print(get_response(system_prompt, user_prompt))

We have 3 services including web application development, mobile app development, 
and custom software solutions.

Final note

Previous methods work well for small contexts
Larger contexts require more sophisticated techniques

Icon representing an alert.

Let's practice!

ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers