OpenAI employee says prompt engineering is no different than effective human communication

• An OpenAI employee says that prompt engineering is no different than communicating with humans.
• Reading, writing, and speaking will be the skills that truly matter in 2024, the worker wrote on X. 
• Other AI observers think learning how to talk to ChatGPT could even help humans communicate better.

You may be able to get paid well over six figures if you're a prompt engineer — an expert in coaxing AI models behind tools like ChatGPT to produce the best outputs. But an OpenAI employee says that the skill isn't as revolutionary as it seems.

"Hot take: Many believe prompt engineering is a skill one must learn to be competitive in the future," Logan Kilpatrick, a developer advocate at OpenAI, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week.

"The reality is that prompting AI systems is no different than being an effective communicator with other humans."

While prompt engineering is an increasingly hot area of expertise, the three underlying skills that truly matter in 2024, the OpenAI employee said, are reading, writing, and speaking. Honing these will give humans a competitive edge over highly intelligent robots in the future as AI technology continues to advance.

"Focusing on the skills necessary to effectively communicate with humans will future proof you for a world with AGI," he said. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to the ability for AI to perform complex cognitive tasks like individual decision making as well as humans do.

When contacted for comment, Kilpatrick directed BI to OpenAI's press office. OpenAI did not immediately respond.

In response to Kilpatrick's post, some X users also said that learning how to talk to AI may even help humans become better communicators.

"Lots of people could learn a great deal about interpersonal communication simply by spending time with these ai systems and learning to work well with them," one X user wrote. Another X user claimed they have become a "better communicator and manager" since learning prompt engineering skills.

And some see knowing how to effectively interact with other humans key in getting better responses from AI.

"Seems quite obvious that talking to/persuading/eliciting appropriate knowledge out of AI's will be as nuanced, important, and as much of an acquired skill as doing the same with humans," Neal Khosla, whose X bio says he's the CEO of an AI startup, wrote in response to Kilpatrick.

The OpenAI employee's thoughts on prompt engineering come as researchers and AI experts alike discover new ways users can talk to ChatGPT to produce the best outputs. The skill comes during a time when ChatGPT users are beginning to integrate the AI chatbot into their personal and professional lives.

A study published in November found that talking to ChatGPT with emotional language like "This is very important to my career" is linked to better responses being generated. AI experts say that assigning ChatGPT a specific role and talking to the chatbot using polite, direct language can yield the best results.

When it comes to using ChatGPT at work, some business leaders believe that soft skills will be crucial in the age of AI. Earlier this month, Aneesh Raman, a vice president at LinkedIn, said that communication, creativity, and flexibility are skills that will set employees apart in the workforce as opposed to technical skills like coding.

Perhaps doubling down on what makes you human may be what saves you from being replaced by AI.