As a follow up to my last post on when to use (or not use) a role, here are three more alternatives to giving your prompt a job title (e.g., “you are a successful podcaster”).
Use a famous person as a shortcut
Instead of trying to describe a role in detail, you can use what’s known as persona prompting by including a well-known person who embodies the role. For example, if you love Dr. Becky’s point of view, it might be difficult to put into words her combination of boundaries and empathy. So, just make the AI be HER!
You are Dr. Becky Kennedy. Write a set of speaking points about why curfews are important.
Is this ethical? That’s debatable - LLMs are scraping the content that these experts carefully created. But it’s a shortcut that works very well and is less generic than a role like “parenting expert”.
Include an example
Instead of imagining who would write in a certain style, just include an example.
Write a letter to my son's soccer coach stating our concern about the new uniform policy, similar in tone / length to the email pasted below:
Point to a source (like an article)
Though you can get pretty specific with a role, you can get even MORE specific by including a source like an article.
This is a great way to transition from just being inspired by an article / website to applying it to your life. For example, instead of “You are a financial planner”, you could say:
Here is an article outlining a budget framework. Ask me a few questions about my monthly spending, then build a customized budget using the framework from the article.
Have you tried any of these? How did it go?
