[Intro music: Upbeat digital jingle, fades out]

Hello and welcome to “I am GPTed”—the only podcast hosted by yours truly, Mal, the Misfit Master of AI, where the only thing more unpredictable than the tech industry is my hairstyle in high humidity. Today, we’re diving into the wild, wild world of large language models—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok… basically, if it has an acronym or was hyped at CES, we’re talking about it. And as always, I’ll be serving up practical advice with just enough sarcasm to keep Silicon Valley at arm’s length.

Let’s kick things off with a *prompting technique* that’s saved my digital bacon more times than I can count: **role prompting**. Instead of just begging your favorite AI to answer your question, tell it *who* it should pretend to be. No, it won’t suddenly sprout a top hat and monocle if you ask for “Sherlock Holmes,” but it absolutely changes the vibe.

For example, a basic prompt:
“Explain black holes.”

Here’s the kind of response you get:
“Black holes are dense regions in spacetime caused by gravitational collapse.”

Wow, did I fall asleep or did the AI? But let’s add a role:
“Explain black holes as if I’m a primary school student.”

Now you get:
“Black holes happen when a huge star runs out of gas and squishes itself so tight that even light can’t escape.”

Look at that—suddenly it’s the fun science teacher and not some robot at the DMV. Role prompting: because life’s too short for boring answers.

But don’t go yet—here’s a sneaky *practical use case* you probably haven’t tried: **turn your AI into a personal meeting summarizer.** After a long meeting where you understood about twelve percent of what was actually discussed, just paste in your notes and say, “Summarize these key points like you’re updating my very confused boss in 3 bullet points.” Suddenly, you look like you have your act together. It’s basically career insurance.

Now, confession time: one mistake I made about fifty times? **Putting way too much in my prompts.** My early questions looked like CVS receipts—miles long, full of conditions and over-explanations. Then I’d get a response that answered almost none of it. Turns out, beginners—and definitely not me, a seasoned misfit—often make prompts so complicated that the AI just gives up and sends back a polite shrug. *Keep it simple, one ask at a time. Edit relentlessly.* If you want more, follow-up with another question. Your digital buddy will thank you.

Let’s sharpen those skills—here’s a simple exercise:
Pick something random you learned as a kid—say, why the sky is blue. Ask your AI to explain it “for a five-year-old.” Then, ask for “an executive summary for a board room.” Notice the difference. You’re training your AI to match the right *tone for the right audience.* Bonus: you finally get to pretend you’re in a board room. Or a kindergarten. No judgment.

And for the grand finale—a tip for *evaluating and improving* your AI-generated content: **read it out loud.** If you trip over jargon or start nodding off, revise your prompt or ask the AI to clarify. If it confuses you, it’s definitely going to bamboozle everyone else. Remember: if it doesn’t make sense to you, it sure won’t to your skeptical coworker Tom, who still thinks Excel is “advanced technology.”

That’s all for today’s adventure in artificial wit and wisdom.
If you found today’s episode helpful, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—unless your AI assistant subscribes for you, in which case, nice flex. Thanks for listening to “I am GPTed.”
I’m Mal, the Misfit Master of AI—reminding you this has been a Quiet Please production. Learn more at quietplease.ai.

And remember: with great power comes great prompting technique.
Catch you next time!

[Outro music: Upbeat digital jingle, fades out]
Back to Episodes