🚨 You need to pay attention to this with your prompts

Hello AInauts,

The summer is coming to an end. We'll be back in the saddle next week, and today is the last issue from the beach.

That's why it's a little different: 3 news, 2 practical tips, 1 tool tip. And a little shorter than usual. But don't worry, Monday is back to normal.

Here's what we have in store for you today:

• 3️⃣ Quick News from Google Gemini & Co.

• 2️⃣ Practical tips: Pay attention to this in your prompts

• 1️⃣ Tool: AI helps you with the calendar chaos

Let's go!

3️⃣ Quick News from Google Gemini & Co.

Google Gemini: Better data analysis & prompt examples

Two updates for Google Gemini. The first is particularly exciting for subscribers to the Google Workspace add-on.

The so-called "Gems" are now available - Google's GPTs, so to speak. You can use them to build your own specialized AI assistants!

With just a few clicks and the right prompt, you can create your own tailor-made AI expert who speaks your language and optimizes workflows. Sure, it's not really a revolutionary feature anymore, it's almost expected from a chatbot. But it's great that it's finally being rolled out.

In addition, files from Google Drive, such as Google Sheets, Docs, CSV, PDF, Excel and Word files, can now also be uploaded directly and processed by Gemini.

There is also the new "Data analysis" function. As the name suggests, it allows you to better analyze your documents and create presentation-ready visuals.

All long overdue, in our opinion. Since we live completely in the Google world, we would like Gemini to become better and more dominant. That would be great, and this update is a good step in the right direction.

The second update from Google: The AI Studio playground has a prompt database, similar to what Anthropic already has. Nothing groundbreaking, but we like inspiration.

Oh, and by the way, Google also launched three new model versions - the Flash models even at massively lower prices than comparable competitor models.

China is upgrading its humanoid robots

An exciting event happened in China: The World Robot Conference showcased 27 humanoid robots. And only one western exhibitor was present, the Tesla Optimus.

The fusion of generative AI and humanoid robots is an extremely exciting area.

Robots like those from AGIBOT run with LLMs and can therefore appear very human in their interactions.

Even if the cost of production will probably remain (too?) high for a while, we hope it will be affordable in the not to distant future.

New version of Grok is one of the best on the market

The new versions of xAI's Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini language models are a big step forward in terms of accuracy and speed.

Both models are now also represented on the leaderboard of the Chatbot Arena, sometimes even ahead of heavyweights such as Claude 3.5 Sonnet. And we are also using Grok more and more often…

Direct access to tweets, i.e. the latest data, also plays into the hands of Grok.

Unfortunately, Grok can only be used with an X Premium subscription. Nevertheless, we find it exciting how the LLMs outdo each other almost from week to week and how many players there are now.

And you can love Elon Musk, hate him, or both. But you have to give him credit for one thing: his companies ship!

2️⃣ Practical tips: Pay attention to this in your prompts

Let's move on to the practical part with two concrete ways on how you can improve your prompts.

1) Use synthetic examples in your prompts

As you may already know, it is incredibly useful to use examples of what good answers would be in your prompts. This way, the AI knows what you’re expecting.

For example: You want good Facebook ad copy for a product? Insert good examples from anyone into your prompt. The most important thing is that they are good! This allows the AI to recognize patterns.

Unfortunately, compiling good examples always involves a lot of effort. You have to research them, evaluate, etc.

However, one shortcut is to first use the AI to create such examples. Then simply select the best ones and put them as examples in the main prompt!

Here’s the prompt for this:

Please create 10 variations of the best Facebook ad texts that are so good they could go into the Guinness Book of Records.

2) Add a <thought> step

Experience also shows that the response quality improves when you ask the AI to think and share these thoughts with you in your prompts.

...Your prompt...

Please think carefully before you answer and write your thoughts in <thoughts> tags before your answer. 

Bonus: Try it without a role

Everyone, including us, has been preaching for years: "Give the AI a role, put a hat on it".

Which means that you should start your prompts with:

• You are a copywriting expert

• You are a futurologist

• You are a nutrition expert

• etc.

The logic behind this is also obvious. The better you tell the AI who it should act as, the better the answers.

However, a new research paper says something different, namely that the answers are often better if you work without a role and simply set the task.

Give it a try and see for yourself!

1️⃣ Tool: AI helps you with calendar chaos

Maybe you know this situation. A full calendar with short breaks between appointments - during which you actually don’t get much done. But you lose that time …

The tool we want to briefly introduce to you today tries to solve this problem (and much more) with the help of AI.

May we introduce? ReclaimAI - your AI calendar and more.

Reclaim was recently bought by Dropbox. Which is why we believe that it could now become exciting for significantly more people!

It's already a game changer, especially for teams. We are testing it ourselves and will probably roll it out to our teams soon.

Maybe this is also interesting for you?

That's it! Thank you for joining us.

Reto & Fabian from the AInauts

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