OPINION: I want to be a Prompt Engineer when I grow up.
When the animated cartoon show The Jetsons first debuted in 1962 it introduced Americans to the futuristic world of the year 2062. This highly fictionalized and somewhat comical depiction of the future was inspired by the prevailing futuristic art style of the time like Googie architecture, space-age aesthetic, and the optimism for the future.
The patriarch of the family, George Jetson, works for the Spacely Space Sprockets company. His official job title is digital index operator and while it sounds complicated when we watch the show we see him mainly pressing buttons, in one episode titled “The Vacation” we find out he only works an hour a day and two days a week.
As technology evolved over the years and science understood the limitations of what we can achieve, this view of the future slowly became redundant. While the fantastic parts of The Jetsons may not be achievable in our lifetime the show’s central idea of technology making our lives more convenient is slowly becoming more of a reality in our time.
With the rise of artificial intelligence technology making rapid advancements in various business sectors, we are seeing a future where systems are becoming more connected to provide seamless reliability for users. This is a potential new avenue for individuals to re-brand or market themselves to employers.
Prompt engineering is one such new field that has been created because of this new emerging technology. The definition of prompt engineering is essentially a user inputs a task in the form of a question to an AI language model which will then complete the task.
To some, this may seem like an easy task much like the button pushing of George Jetson, but the reality is this type of work must be looked at by careful consideration for a correct outcome to be achieved. Users must understand the limitations and craft specific ways for prompts to be understood by the AI and with mastery of this field one can excel and potentially become an invaluable part of a business or company.
The old saying goes, getting in on the ground floor and how this relates to prompt engineering is that this is a new emerging type of career and is one that pays extremely well with one company offering a salary range of around 280,000 to $375,000.
Unfortunately, there has been a persistent fear of AI taking over current jobs in the future. Most of this has some basis of reasonable fear as the idea of machines performing a job much more efficiently thus reducing the need for actual human workers is something that is important to consider.
While the idea of machines slowly replacing humans in society has been around for a while the reality is that level of artificial intelligence is still something that is up in the air on when we would achieve that level of technological advancement.
At our current level of understanding, we have made strides in artificial intelligence but humanity will still need more time to create something that can be considered truly sentient.
We should instead look at jobs like prompt engineering as ways to reduce and simplify the workload of individuals. By creating a highly detailed prompt the output that is received will be one of high quality,
Highly detailed prompts can also help with automating most work to an extent and help individuals deal with the more complex tasks and creativity for AI will increase more as it will receive prompts from different users written in different ways that will help create unique outputs.
But all good things are not guaranteed to last, the allure of how most prompt engineer positions are advertised as not needing any additional training may not last long. Critics point out that this type of technology will supersede the need for human intervention as the most current iteration of ChatGPT 4 is able to understand natural language and respond with its own prompt.
It is important to know that the same article highlights the importance of understanding what problems a program need fixing before asking an AI how to fix it. This type of job will still need the human element attached to it, this merger of both human intelligence and artificial intelligence will create a streamlined way that can get a task completed in an effortless way.
The general idea of this type of career should not be looked at through the lens of ridicule or mistrust but should be supported. Humanity is evolving and so is our technology, creating a society where jobs and workloads can be done in a more convenient manner is something that we should strive for. One day our society could be like George Jetson’s future where we go to work for a fraction of the time we do currently and simply press buttons all day.
