every morning I get to wake up around 11AM go into my home office where I spend about two
minutes typing in some prompts to AI put out my hands get fed millions of dollars for this work
I do and then close my computer and go on with my day this is the life of a prompt engineer what
exactly is a prompt engineer why does it pay so much and is it worth actually learning to become
one or is this a job that in a few years will fizzle out these are all questions we are going
to be answering in today's video we keep hearing and seeing on the news or in job postings about
these high paying roles called prompt engineers and of course this has become a recent hype with
AI becoming about and there's really two main camps or parties if you will one team being
like prompt Engineers not a real job and the other team being like this is the way we are
moving to this is in demand I mean some companies are paying over 300 000 us for this role for a
reason all right let's explore this role answer some questions around it and well get into it
now I think to start with prompt engineer gets kind of a bad reputation because we oversimpify
the role we think oh prompt engineer my grandma can do that all I need to do is put in a prompt
and the AI will give me results in reality though what a prompt engineer does is much
more complex than just that prompt engineer is a professional who yes works with generative AI
models such as you know chat GPT gpt4 and others now these models have gone through what is called
reinforcement learning from Human feedback which is how we are able to quote unquote speak to them
but more technically speaking give them prompts and they give us what sounds like a human response
however these systems are not perfect by any means they are still in their early stages
a lot of times they have trouble understanding a prompt or a query and then also to giving a proper
response prompt Engineers role comes in at this point where they come up with ways to make the
AI system produce a proper response one common technique that is used by prompt Engineers is
called Chain of Thought thoughts prompting which involves breaking down a query into sub queries
and some people in the industry the industry term that sounds so Tech probably but some people in
the industry also call this prompt engineering on steroids so I think this is a good point to do a
real world example let's do an example of let's say Healthcare a prompt engineer who is hired by
a Healthcare company or a tech company that is managing some healthcare technologies will might
be employed to refine the request that is made of generative AI in order to help doctors generate
more notes more efficiently with less errors so they're essentially going in and working with the
AI and making sure that the responses the AI is giving is more accurate based on whatever
prompt the doctor puts it it doesn't have to be as specific or structured in a certain way so
what skills are really required to become a prompt engineer can anyone become one and I think this is
why so many people are really hating or disliking on this prompt engineering role is because it
feels was like it's so easily accessible I know a lot of individuals who are Engineers are upset of
why are these people getting these titles of engineer when they're not an engineer that's
you know personal preference I guess or is it I don't know anyway that's a whole other topic
we're not going to go there but at the end of the day there are some really interesting skills that
are required to become a prompt engineer it's not something that anyone can just walk up and
get a job just like that paying three hundred thousand dollars plus there is a lot of skills
that are required for this job and the credentials really vary based on what company you are looking
to apply for this role at as I mentioned earlier in this video for people who are looking to get
into a specific industry so whether it be health care whether it be Fashion Beauty you will have to
have a background in that expertise as to what you are applying as we know Tech touches every
single industry now these roles with AI will affect every industry so the first thing is
if you are applying for a specific type of prompt engineer that works for a specific area as I just
mentioned you will also need to be to some degree an expert in that field because you are creating
prompts working with the AI to ensure that it is accurate and in order to do that you need to have
knowledge of the subjects you are teaching it other skills that might be required on some job
postings and on others I'm seeing are not but really important to have in my opinion having
a background in coding and machine learning might not be required on all job postings but definitely
is very important will help you succeed in this role having a background with coding knowledge
can become really helpful when you are creating systematic evaluations of prompts and working
with coding tasks now as far as machine learning goes this is very helpful as well and in some
cases necessary in order to really understand the overall strengths and weaknesses of AI
models now despite these technical skills it's not required of a prompt engineer you're not
going to be sitting there typically coding but having this knowledge as background will help
you substantially also too of course logical thinking reasonable skills can be crucial for
understanding how the AI will act these are skills that are really important and when it
comes to logical thinking this is a skill that you often pick up with coding skills so although it's
not required to have a background in coding if you do I think you will find this role a lot
easier and on that note I think you'll be able to negotiate a higher salary because of that
past experience I don't understand why do they get paid so much great question let me explain
prompt engineer actually before I even get into that let's clear something up here prompt
engineer does not always pay a ton of money we see these articles talking about it paying
so well and there are use cases which I will get to that do pay well but also too there are times
where prompt engineering roles right now are not that high paying relatively speaking there's a
really big range in those roles now what if I told you being a prompt engineer had the potential in
some cases to save people's lives let me explain I found this article here that was sharing a story
about a graduate research fellow who was working in the Innovation and digital Health accelerator
in Boston's Children's Health hospital and he is part and this individual named Benjamin is
part of a team that is hiring for prompt engineers and they are hiring to have someone who can come
in and work with generative AI to help doctors generate notes faster he explains he needs someone
who can help us refine the ass of the generative AIS so the information we're spitting out is
limited in hallucinations and each of these tasks he goes on to say is going to be really Niche very
specific their internal system isn't trained on Wikipedia and Reddit but instead by sensitive
notes about diagnosis patient billing information and comments between medical professionals about a
given patient in an extremely specific context see how this role can all of a sudden become
very important very intentional very meaningful when you start putting people's lives on it and
thinking about it in the realm of healthcare now this is one example of a very high paying prompt
engineering role and let's go into something more that's a little bit more generic because as we've
seen as well that can still be very high paying even with open ai's job posting around a prompt
engineer it was more generic it focused more on the technical side of things the technical
knowledge that you should possess or have experienced so there is the flip side to both
having that knowledge is really what is key and being someone who is very logical and a critical
thinker now now I've seen job postings going from 40 000 USD to 350 000 us for compensation so this
definitely does range and I think that example of healthcare is such a great one to really highlight
how this job is legit and it's needed in a lot of fields for specific cases so are these jobs going
to be around in the future or are they here one day and gone the next this is another question
that a lot of people including myself have really been digging into to try and understand because on
one hand it seems like this in so many cases is here to stay it's really needed but on the other
the way AI is going it makes you really wonder will AI just get to a point where it doesn't have
a prompt engineer anymore that it's just its own prompt engineer well let's go back to that story
of the individual who's working at the Children's Hospital he actually goes on to quote that having
a trained person interacting with AI is going to be important for a really long time that might
not be the case for all Fields but certainly for a Health Care system and I think this is a really
great example of how this role will be needed in many different Industries very specific use cases
but it might not be the generic or as common of a job as we keep on hearing about today in any
case though I don't think that's a reason to not explore this rule if you are interested in it as
we've seen with every job especially with AI and the way it is going it's continuing to evolve this
isn't something new and if you are interested in prompt engineering and maybe starting out
with a very lucrative potential of a job why not go for it the skills you will build through that
the networks the connections you will build through that you can continue to build upon
whether you are if you're basing your decision right now on will this job be around in the next
five or ten years I don't think you're asking the right questions it's more so will I want to
continue to learn and grow with tech as it does as well because that doesn't just affect prompt
engineering roles it affects all roles alright I hope you enjoyed this video going through what
exactly is a prompt engineer how to become one and why does it pay so much leave in the comments
so are you interested in this role do you think this role is legit do you think it's a joke or how
do you feel about it I'm really curious to hear your comments and as always I'll do my absolute
best to respond to every single one if you haven't already make sure to hit that subscribe button if
you really enjoyed these type of videos leave down in the comments other topics you want me to cover
that's how I make these videos is for you alright I'll see you all soon thanks everyone [Music]
[Music] thank you