Chatbot Story Prompting

News

OpenAI is now ready to work with the military. Open AI has dropped its ban on military use of ChatGPT. OpenAI is also working with the military on cybersecurity issues.

Scholar AI has revamped its application to not use ChatGPT. That is the native implementation of Scholar AI. The online version is a note-taking service web app that helps researchers to use for note-taking research. Here is another link that is dated in nature but explains Scholar AI in more depth.

A Stanford study has shown that using AI as your lawyer could land you in jail. Well not quite, but the legal advice produced by GPTs is largely hallucinated. The way GPTs work is backward-looking and summarizing. This leads to chatbots’ rampant hallucinations in legal matters.

For a deep dive on Graph Thoughts that is kinda technical try this post on Substack. If you want to learn more about the behind-the-scenes of how LLMs work.

Story prompting involves giving a chatbot some kind of narrative opening and asking it to continue the story. This tests the chatbot's ability to generate coherent subsequent plot, dialogue, and details that logically follow from the initial prompt.

There are a few main approaches to crafting story prompts:

- Fairy tale prompts - For example, "Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom, there lived a young peasant girl named Ella. One day, the royal prince announced a ball to find a wife. Ella wanted desperately to go but her evil stepmother would not allow it. What happens next?" This draws on familiar fairy tale archetypes.

- Realistic literary prompts - Such as "Jeremy arrived at the train station 15 minutes before his long-awaited blind date was scheduled to appear. He waited anxiously, wondering what this woman would be like. When 11:45 came and went without sight of his date, he began to fear he'd been stood up. Just then..." This prompts in a realistic fiction style.

- Sci-fi/fantasy prompts - For instance, "Captain Kira stared at the alien spacecraft that had just decloaked off the port side. The Federation was not expecting visitors from the neutral Gamma Quadrant. She gave the order to raise shields as a precaution. A crackling voice then transmitted over communications saying..." This explores more speculative genres.

- Personal narrative prompts - Such as "Yesterday I went to the grocery store. I picked up milk, eggs, carrots and started heading towards the checkout when suddenly..." The chatbot continues recounting your fictional experience.

The key is prompting with an intriguing narrative opening that establishes characters, settings, and some initiating action or conflict, commanding the chatbot to build on that foundation and advance the plot. This tests conversational creativity through storytelling.

Additional notes to keep in mind when story prompting

Here are some additional tips for effectively using story prompting with a chatbot:

1. Frame the initial prompt clearly as the beginning of a story. Use familiar cues like "Once upon a time..." or open with a descriptive scene setting and character introduction.

2. Keep the beginning short and open-ended. Don't define too many specifics upfront that would restrict the chatbot's options for continuing the tale. Leave gaps.

3. Use vivid, evocative language and details to hook the chatbot, but avoid overwriting. Allow room for the chatbot's own "voice" and specifics to emerge.

4. Consider your chosen genre and scenario and prime the chatbot with just enough background context and tropes to guide its output - but not so much that you pre-determine every plot twist.

5. Be patient andpersistent. Don't expect brilliance and seamless narrativity right away. You may need to prompt, validate good outputs, and re-prompt to develop an interesting arc.

6. Monitor for inconsistencies with facts/events established in your initial prompt. Gently reorient the chatbot as needed if it contradicts or ignores prompt details.

7. Occasionally interject questions and comments as if engaging a storyteller, not just passively reading. This can spur more interactive narration.

The goal is balancing guidance that activates the chatbot's creativity against over-scripting everything yourself. With practice and the right prompting approach, chatbots can generate some fascinating emergent stories.