Discover the Art of Prompting

This course is part of the Google AI Essentials program. In our daily lives, the way we phrase our words directly affects how others respond; the same is true when communicating with artificial intelligence. This course introduces you to prompting, the practice of designing instructions that elicit the most useful results from generative AI. You will discover that a prompt is more than just a question; it is a text input that provides the necessary context and instructions for an AI model to generate high-quality output.

The curriculum begins with the mechanics of Large Language Models (LLMs). You will learn how these models are trained on millions of sources to identify patterns and use statistics to predict the most likely word to come next in a sequence. To help you master these tools, you will learn to “Thoughtfully Create Really Excellent Inputs” by being clear and specific about your intended task. You will explore specialized strategies like few-shot prompting, which involves providing two or more examples to guide the AI’s style and format.

Because you rarely get the perfect result on your first try, you will learn to use an iterative process: creating a prompt, evaluating it for accuracy and bias, and refining your prompt for the next draft. You will also unlock techniques for mastering complex work, such as chain-of-thought prompting – asking the AI to “show its work” by explaining its reasoning step-by-step – and prompt chaining, which breaks large projects into a series of smaller, connected tasks.