Prompt engineering has taken the generative AI world by storm. The job, which entails optimizing textual input to effectively communicate with large language models, has been hailed by World Economic Forum as the number one “job of the future”.

I'm calling BS on that one!

there's many reasons, here are two:

Prompt engineering is different between different language models. specific phrases that work with chatgpt do not work with bard or even between gpt 3.5 and 4, let alone work with the hundreds of spinoffs and proprietary models. So you can't just learn a set of prompts and work anywhere.

Secondly, chatgpt 4 is already learning natural language much better and faster then any of it's competition, which will make Prompt Engineering OBSOLETE in just a few months or less, maybe longer for the newer less experience models but still they will all get there in a relatively short period of time.

So what works? what is the goto skill needed to work with AI..

Thats simple, PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION. Where a person forsees a problems or can put into plan words a detailed description the problem and environment they encountered the problem in. And a bit of intuition to have the ability to describe the desired outcome in contrast to what outcome actually happened..

Another great skill to have is project breakdown.

For instance if you simply tell chatgpt to write a business plan to sell widgets it will write a very basic plan for you.

But if you ask chatgpt what elements do I need to include in a detailed business plan for selling widgets it will respond with a list of about 6-10 suggestions.

Then ask it to first write an example of suggestion #1, then #2, 3,4,5 etc.

Then ask it to tie all the samples together in a concise plan. And then, you will need to copy it's output back to it and ask it if there are things that need to be added or can look more professional.

You are not going to just say write me a business plan for selling widgets and get a professional level concise business plan, not yet anyway.

You also are not going to ask it to write an app in python (or any other language) to pick the next lottery winning number in your state. But you can ask it what the flow chart would look like to write such a program and then have it write each piece seperately and then tie it all together in a neat bow for you..