Big models such as ChatGPT bring fire to new classes, how far can the "group of people who can spells" go

The popularity of large models such as ChatGPT has led to the new profession of "prompt word engineer". Some refer to "prompt word engineers" as "the group of people who can spell." It is understood that at present, most of the positions called "Prompt Engineer" or "PromptEngineer" on major domestic recruitment platforms have a monthly salary of 15,000-60,000 yuan. While there is still a lot of debate about whether it is a new profession or a temporary job, there is no denying that AIGC-related occupations such as prompt engineers are booming.

Producing content through generative artificial intelligence (GAI) represented by ChatGPT and Midjourney is not new, but accurately generating high-level works with GAI is not an easy task, and operators need to split complex tasks into AI-recognized languages to put forward multiple requirements to obtain more accurate answers. This also gave rise to a profession that "specifically asks questions to AI" - Prompt Engineer.

Not everyone has access to high-quality conversations with AI, and prompt-word engineers have been likened to "the people who can spell." Some people think that prompt words are an indispensable part of the popularization of artificial intelligence and should be quickly learned with the trend of the times, while others believe that prompt word engineers are a temporary job in the process of training artificial intelligence, and will become a thing of the past in the process of continuous self-improvement of the program. What kind of profession is this? What does the future hold? What should we do as ordinary people?

Professions that "chat" with AI

What initially made the prompt engineer fire out of the circle was a high-paying offer from artificial intelligence unicorn ScaleAI. In November last year, foreign Internet celebrity Riley Goodside joined ScaleAI with a lot of tips skills and experience, becoming the "first recruited prompt word engineer" in the industry, with an estimated annual salary of more than one million yuan.

The reporter learned that at present, most of the positions called "Prompt Engineer" or "PromptEngineer" on major domestic recruitment platforms have a monthly salary of 15,000-60,000 yuan, and most of the requirements for job seekers' experience are 1-3 years, and even many positions are marked with "unlimited experience". The work mainly includes designing, managing and optimizing Prompt in related industries to train large models, and cooperate with relevant business teams to improve overall product performance.

Unlike traditional programmers, although prompt engineers also have a job working with machines, the latter sends plain text commands to AI through the natural language that people use every day, and the AI executes them. Therefore, many people believe that this is a job that generates value by skilled chat, with high income and low threshold.

However, there is still a gap between professional players and regular players. The prompt word largely determines the result generated by the model, and even for the same question, entering different prompt words will get different results. Tang Xiaolan, associate professor of the School of Information Engineering of Capital Normal University, pointed out that it is more difficult to achieve the final desired complex result through one or two questions, and the problem that engineers need to solve is how to design the problem to achieve the desired result.

In Tang Xiaolan's view, practitioners first need to have certain knowledge in related fields to be able to ask questions accurately. "Artificial intelligence is gradually developing into various vertical fields, such as the lawyer industry, which requires legal knowledge to accurately describe the problem and judge whether the results generated are correct and feasible." At the same time, she believes that practitioners in this profession also need a lot of experience in the use of AIGC (artificial intelligence generated content) and know how to ask optimization questions through multiple rounds to obtain the expected results. "On this basis, if you can understand the working principle of the large model and improve the quality of questions in principle, it will be more divided."

According to Zhou Xiaokai, a master's student majoring in artificial intelligence at the School of Computer Science of Wuhan University, testing prompt words is not all the work of prompt word engineers. "Big models are in the process of evolving, and the work of prompt word engineers also involves guiding large language models to produce the desired output of questioners in specific tasks and roles through programming languages, so this work requires not only understanding natural language, but also understanding programming languages."

Take a job of prompt engineer from a medical company marked "40k-60k·14 salary" on the recruitment platform as an example, the job description requires the position to monitor the model performance and terminal products, continuously optimize the prompt words and improve product performance; At the same time, it is necessary to cooperate with the medical team to continuously improve product performance through prompt engineering, enhance the medical consistency and consistency of products, and provide the best patient experience. Among the job bonuses, it also includes: familiar with Python or programming experience, familiar with the doctor's diagnosis and treatment process, etc. According to the reporter's observation, most Prompt-related positions have set certain thresholds in terms of professional knowledge, programming ability, product experience, etc., and are not the "million annual salary machine chatter" that some people understand.

At present, most Internet technology companies and traditional enterprises that introduce AI large models have talent demand for prompt engineers and provide related positions. Tang Xiaolan believes that the demand for prompt engineers does exist, and it will be on the rise in a short period of time. "It takes time for new technologies to become popular, to get everyone familiar with it, and in the process, professional people are needed to do it."

A post? A skill?

There are also doubts about the fact that the word engineer is becoming a new profession. Some people believe that from a commercial point of view, products such as ChatGPT and Midjourney have an incentive to further lower the threshold for use so that they can serve more users; At the same time, the prompt word is also easy to copy and imitate, once the whole process is popularized and standardized, this type of work can easily be replaced.

You can see that tech companies are trying to bridge the gap between regular users and prompt word engineers. Software such as FusionAI can help users generate more appropriate prompt words; The image generator DALL-E2 provides users with a very elaborate instruction manual for prompt words; The "/describe" command issued by Midjourney can derive the prompt word in reverse according to the image uploaded by the user and generate the corresponding text description to provide users with creative inspiration.

Prompt words applied in various scenarios are also gradually becoming products. Foreign countries have Krea, PromptBase, PromptHero and other special prompt word platforms to sell clearly priced prompt products, involving GPT, Midjourney, StableDiffusion, DALL-E and other models, including music, painting, photography and other scenes. Consumers can buy a system of prompt-generating high-quality works for less than $10. On domestic e-commerce platforms, some merchants are also selling specific model prompt materials at lower prices, including graphic and text use tutorials, prompt word use case analysis, and tens of thousands of keywords.

Some time ago, Microsoft AI Research launched a new framework called Automatic Prompt Optimization (APO), trying to make AI optimize prompt words without manual training itself, hoping to help users create better prompt words with minimal human intervention and optimization.

Prompt words: Will an engineer become a temporary job? Tang Xiaolan believes that it should be viewed according to the situation. "The evolution of large model technology must be more and more adapted to human beings, and from this level, Prompt will become more and more adapted to human thinking habits." But unless there is technology in the future to directly output the content in the human brain, we must express our own ideas, need to be presented in the form of a text, as long as it is still at this stage, Prompt will always exist, and the optimization and exploration of it will always exist. ”

Previously, Zheng Yizhou, director of technical products at StableDiffusion, pointed out that prompt technology should be used as a skill, not a position. Tang Xiaolan stressed that whether from a professional perspective or not, how to ask questions and how to better communicate with AI are necessary skills in the future. "This may not be a need for a particular profession, but a capability that every citizen should master in the future in a digital society." Just like everyone uses computers now, then the use of computers itself is no longer a special ability that requires a special position to operate. ”

Put your tools to good use and find your place

Whether an engineer can be considered a separate profession is still controversial in the industry. But there's no denying that AIGC-related careers such as prompt engineers are booming. Perhaps what should be more important now is what job seekers should do in such an era.

A few days ago, the "AIGC Employment Trend Big Data Report 2023" released by Liepin Big Data Research Institute shows that AIGC's talent demand shows a more obvious momentum than AI. The comparison found that from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021, the job growth of AIGC and AI was comparable; Since then, AIGC has generally been in a continuous growth trend, with the number of new jobs in the first quarter of 2023 being 5.63 times that of the first quarter of 2020; the growth rate of the number of new AI jobs has slowed down relatively slowly, 1.95 times that of the first quarter of 2020. In the past year, the average annual salary of AIGC's new job recruitment was 401,200 yuan, which was 80,900 yuan higher than the average annual salary of AI recruitment (320,300 yuan) in the same period.

It should be acknowledged that AIGC's improvement in the quality and efficiency of ordinary people's daily work such as copywriting, translation, and mapping is obvious to all, and some people may face the risk of unemployment. Mobvoi founder and CEO Li Zhifei believes that there are two types of occupations that are easiest to replace with AIGC, one is a profession that can complete the closed loop of work on the computer and has a large number of repetitive links in the work content, such as basic art/design; The other category is occupations that are easy to standardize, such as customer service and marketing copywriting using fixed phone techniques. The least likely to be replaced are occupations that require face-to-face interaction and physical skills, such as craftsmen such as plasterers, electricians, and mechanics, and service workers such as hairdressers, cooks, doctors and nurses.

At the same time, new opportunities are emerging. According to Mo Yu, head of Liepin AI technology, due to the technical assistance of AIGC, more and more small-scale enterprises will be born; More digital employees will appear in the workplace, undertake a more detailed division of labor, improve the professionalism and stability of the organization, thereby further promoting business exploration and iterative efficiency, which makes the business that previously required larger scale collaboration can now be competently done in small teams or individual operations.

"At present, there are many talents with computer-related disciplines in the AIGC field." Li Zhifei pointed out that as AIGC's demand for talents is becoming more and more diversified, in addition to traditional computer science and data science talents, AIGC also needs professionals with knowledge and experience in AI model optimization, natural language processing, robot operating systems, etc.

In the face of employment pressure brought by AIGC, Qiu Zeyuan, a master's student in computer software and theory at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, lamented that in the computer track, the core competitiveness is the technical threshold, but the application of technology in enterprises is changing with each passing day, and college students lay a foundation for disciplines in school and learn classic technologies, but sometimes it is difficult to contact the latest framework. In his opinion, for ordinary people, it is necessary to keep learning new things at all times.

For the rapid iteration of technology, Qiu Zeyuan felt that there was no need to be too anxious. "If everyone does not know this new technology, enterprises need to employ people or look at ability, and through internship and training period project training, they can quickly realize technical skills." Moreover, when students are in school, they will also recommend good learning projects to each other, such as following up cutting-edge research and hot spots through the open source community. ”

At the plenary session of the 2023 Zhongguancun Forum held in May this year, Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li boldly predicted that 50% of the world's work in 10 years will be prompt word projects, and called on domestic education to strengthen the cultivation of students' ability to ask questions. As an educator in the field of artificial intelligence, Tang Xiaolan suggested that computer science students, whether computer science or not, should be open to new technologies and consciously exercise their ability to master them. "More importantly, we should cultivate cross-cutting capabilities in this field and other disciplines in a targeted manner, make good use of tools, and find our place in the constant change."

(Source: China Youth Daily)

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