For better answers, ask ChatGPT to play a role

Ask and ye shall receive

Today’s tip comes from the paper How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok.

Ask for answers in the voices of various experts

You often can get a better and more specific answer by asking for an answer in the voice of another person, a third party. Here goes:

What are the causes of inflation, as it might be explained by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman?

By mentioning Friedman you are directing the GPT to look at a more intelligent segment of the potential answer space and this directing will usually get you a better answer than if you just ask “What are the causes of inflation?” Similarly, you want all of the words used in your query to be intelligent-sounding.

Of course, you may not agree with the views of Friedman on inflation. Here are a few economists who are well known and have written a lot on a wide variety of issues:Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, Susan Athey, Paul Krugman, Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok

The main points being made are:

• If you ask a generic question, you’ll get a generic answer

• If you ask it to answer as an expert, you will get a much better answer

• If you ask it to answer as different experts, you will get different answers

What if you don’t know who the experts in this area are? What if you don’t know whose answer you are likely to be interested in? No problem: ChatGPT to the rescue:

When in doubt, ask GPT itself who might be the relevant experts. How about this?:

“I have a question on international trade. Which economists in the last thirty years might be the smartest experts on such questions?”

The model will be very happy to tell you, and then you can proceed with your further queries.

If you tried this out and got good results, I’d love to hear from you.