Exploring ChatGPT Prompts as an Emerging Digital Writing Genre

Submitter: Anuj Gupta, U of Arizona

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The experiment:

Many writers worry about being replaced by ChatGPT. To counter this, I teach students to write AI “prompts” to show how their critical thinking and creativity are essential, even where AI is used. In one such exercise, I defined “prompts” as an emerging digital writing genre using which humans perform the social action of interacting with ChatGPT. Then I defined “prompt engineering” as the process of iteratively designing prompts to elicit desired outputs from AI tools while critically assessing the outputs & reflecting on their usefulness. Finally, I defined “prompting techniques” as elements that make up rhetorical moves in prompts. To sample some techniques, we skimmed OpenAI’s (2023) prompting suggestions. Students then tinkered with ChatGPT prompts I had designed for a narrative writing exercise like this one:

Create a character for a sci-fi story. Use raw material from my notes below to understand what I’m trying to do: ///I am designing an ad campaign for a government project to raise awareness about solar energy. The sci-fi story I create should help with that. I want my character to have the superpower to do photosynthesis.///

ChatGPT’s answer to this prompt: https://shareg.pt/rSG0To3

I showed students how I created this prompt by integrating my idea of a superhero with photosynthesizing powers with OpenAI’s (2023) suggestion to use “///” to separate instructions, contexts & data in a prompt. We then iteratively tweaked this prompt & analyzed ChatGPT’s outputs.

Results:

This assignment was created for a prompt engineering workshop I was invited to conduct for a first-year writing class for design thinking majors at Anant National University in Gujarat, India. Many students had never seen ChatGPT’s responses before, so they were excited. The most important critical engagement happened when students iteratively tweaked this prompt and critically analyzed ChatGPT’s output. For example, some students noted that most of the characters ChatGPT generated were Westernized and not representative of their lives. Thinking about prompts as a genre of writing that requires iterative revision and critical thinking enabled them to creatively use prompt engineering techniques to make ChatGPT practically address this critique. Collectively, we made the following additions to the prompt above: ///This character should be from Gujarat and speak Gujarati. Make sure that the details about this character are well suited to the social and linguistic background it comes from. Do not resort to stereotypical details.///

Here is how ChatGPT responded to this revised prompt: https://shareg.pt/6ju05uR. While some students decided to use ideas from this output, others created their own characters.

Overall, teaching prompts as an emerging genre of digital writing can help develop both functional and critical literacies about AI and empower our students to realize that their critical thinking and creativity are essential, even where AI is used.

Relevant resources:

• Gupta, Anuj. Robopoetics: AI Prompt Engineering and Ethics for Design Students and Creative Writers bit.ly/442MNug. Anant University.
• OpenAI. Best Practices for Prompt Engineering with OpenAI API | OpenAI Help Center. 2023, https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6654000-best-practices-for-prompt-engineering-with-openai-api.

Contact:

• Email: anujgupta[AT]arizona[DOT]edu
• Twitter: @mettalrose