My name is Tega. Currently, I work as a senior business analyst, and I'm here to give a talk.

I'm just going to put on the air. All good now.

Using AI Like a Colleague

So, I'm here to give a talk. I've titled, Most People Use AI Like Google, Use It Like a Colleague.

So, by show of hands, I want to know how many people here have ever... I'll paint a scenario. For three days, three straight nights, you've had tea. You've had fish and chips for tea.

How many people here, by show of hands, have gone to an AI tool and asked the AI tool for a recommendation on what to eat? Oh, it's not just me. So there are plenty of us doing that, yes.

So, sorry. Just need it. So it shows that there are many of us doing that.

Why Better Prompts Matter

that and one thing i want to lay here right now is if you go into any any ai tool and put any kind of question or prompt or anything it gives you a response and that's because ai to follow the basic computer principle garbage in garbage out so whatever you give to ai to get a response from it

and that's why i've come here to i've come to give this talk today just to enlighten people and maybe Maybe like tell you maybe better ways to prompt your AI for getting ideas for what you can eat tonight or where to travel to.

So one thing I want to also link before I go into the talk is that AI is predictive. So anything you get from an AI tool, any kind of response, you have to validate your response. You have to check you as the individual. That's why we control how we use AI.

We control what we use it for. So, any response you get, check that it's correct because, like I said, garbage in, garbage out. So, you don't want to get a response from an AI tool and then you are just accepting whatever it gives to you without checking it.

The Building Blocks of an Effective Prompt

So, one thing you want to do when you use an AI tool, give it context. If you want to prompt, you want to prompt your AI because you need, you want to get a response, you want to achieve something out of that prompt. You have to give it context.

Give AI Context

If you just put a basic, where can I travel to for holiday, it will give you any ideas. You've not told the AI tool, I want to go somewhere in Europe or somewhere in North America. So you need to give it context about what you want it to do for you at that certain point or for that maybe like project or chat that you have with your AI tool.

Assign a Role and Define the Outcome

Again, you want to give it a role. So, as a business analyst, what I do sometimes is I tell the AI to act as if you're a world -class business analyst because I want to get the best ideas out of it. So, I give it that role.

And then you can also tell the AI to, if you're into movie production, act as if you're Quentin Tarantino. And then, so give it a role. Let it know exactly what it's doing for you and what does good look like. What do you want to achieve from it?

So, if I put any question to AI tool, and I'm going to do that here as a practical demo, if I put any question in the AI tool, it's going to give me all kind of response. It's going to give me different kind of response, and I really want something. I want it maybe in three paragraphs, maybe in five lines.

Maybe I want something. I want to know what I want to achieve out of that, because if it gives me a lot of response, it might end up confusing me, and AI is meant to make life simpler for us, and that's making it tougher for me.

If it's confusing me, then it's not doing its job. So we need to let it know what you want to achieve, the outcome you want to get from

Can you all hear me at the back?

Set Boundaries for the Response

that prompt, and also, sometimes you want it to avoid certain scenarios like, oh, avoid telling me this, avoid telling me that, because based on this context rule, what good looks like i want to avoid it's also based on the kind of question you're asking it so sometimes you may want to say avoid giving me a response that is contradictory to what i've asked you so you

because it it all or you want to argue give me an argument against what i'm thinking yeah so whatever you're asking you want to know what to avoid and in in business analysis or in tech we call it baselining you want to baseline your requirements to the AI tool and the

A Practical Prompting Demo

next one so right now I want to do a show -and -tell I want to give you practical demo I put two different prompt one is big very big what can I have for tea tonight that's all that's there and then it's a specific one I've put a lot of jargons in there so I'm going to do a practical demo now and And then we'll see both responses and we'll judge what makes it different.

So this is the awkward part. When you're trying to do something in front of everybody, it's very awkward in the office. It's always like, it's when the computer starts acting up. You start acting like, ah, so where is it?

So my AI, my cloud calls me Tease. That's my nickname. Ah, I wish. So, oh, medium. Oh, yeah.

So, it's giving me all kind of options. It's put jollof rice because he knows I'm Nigerian. I like jollof rice. It's giving me all kinds. Crispy noci. I don't know what that is. What's crispy noci? I don't know what it is.

It's giving me a response that he thinks I want to eat because there's no context there. it's just uh this is what i think you want to eat tonight and jacket potato do i like it do i never like it doesn't know if i like jacket potato and it's giving me all of those responses so now i'm going to put this specific one i'm going to see the difference in both i'll put in a new chat

so with this one what i've done with this is that i've put some more details like you know I'll just leave it there so I put some more details like what I've been having for tea for three nights about fish and chips I'm sick of it I'm

tired I've given you what I have in the house and I've told it I don't want to go to the shop so don't give me anything that will make me go to the shop use what I've given you to make a meal and you see this is this is better this this this this response uses what I have in the house to make a meal that's yeah maybe I like this one chicken and pepper pasta it looks nice so beyond just this

simple analogy I've done here there it's it's in anything you do so if you're trying to get a response from an AI tool you want to give it enough detail back Back to my slide.

From Generic Suggestions to Useful Answers

So you want to give it enough detail because like the first one, you can see I got a generic list of no idea what I like, what I've got. There was no background to the prompt.

And then this one has one quick decision, one I can act on, and it makes my life easier. It makes me get a meal in 30 minutes with the resources I have.

So you want to give your AI the prompt, your prompt engineering. You want to put more context, ensure that it's detailed enough.

Using AI Safely and Responsibly

And one thing you want to do while using AI, too, is that we have to be using it safely because you don't want to put personal information in there about yourself or about someone. You want to ensure that you are anonymizing anything that can identify someone, any confidential information, you don't want to put it in there. You want to also verify your response, ensure that you're getting the right response from your AI.

so not much to say this is my closing slide and I've used an AI to do this so it shows you how it makes my life easier I just had to put some prompting and I got this nice slide deck that I would never do in a million years myself so

Using AI to Build Your Advantage

depending on what you want to use AI for it's here to sharpen you there's so many theories about AI I don't know if people have seen stuff that I've seen in in different places, but I don't think it's that bad. I think it depends on how we use it. So we need to be well -educated on how we use AI.

And if using that work, you want to get ideas, you want to be good at your job. So it's a way of making you better. So it's something that gives you an edge over your colleagues, over your peers in your industry. So you have to use it to your advantage.

If you're studying, you want to pass the exam, you want to get a certification, there's a lot of,

Learning and Professional Development

because these AI models have been trained with a lot of information. They have all kinds of information in there. So you can use it to, for example, let's say you're a visual learner. You could use the AI tool to try to get materials that can visually teach you what maybe you're struggling with trying to understand based on your schoolwork or your dissertation or something like that. It could help you bring out those materials if you put the right prompt in.

Improving Your Business

and also if you're a business person you want to upskill your business might not be the first in that sector you can use the AI to look for different businesses that are doing something similar to yourself and then you can study what they have done and maybe use that to upskill your own business

and make it better so AI is here to sharpen you or replace you

Final Takeaways

and I'll just leave you one thing if you have like let's say you have a job a regular 9 to 5 or you have a business or you're studying, try to look for something that you want to do repeatedly and have one prompt that you can keep using to master how you use your AI tool for your advantage.

And always verify the facts, protect confidential information, and you own the output. We need to, as humans, use it safely and ensure that we're not using it in the wrong manner.

Thank you very much.