What is a prompt?
A prompt is whatever you type to an AI model such as ChatGPT: a question, an instruction, a piece of text to work on, or all three.
4 min read
Robert Scales
A Beginner's Guide to ChatGPT
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Supercharge Your Career and Life. Written between late 2022 and March 2023 with GPT-4 as co-pilot, edited by Tim Gilmour, published by Holistic Hybrid in April 2023.
What's inside
The book teaches a simple method: give the AI a role, give it context, state the task, ask for a format, then refine and verify. It walks through prompts for a dozen professions, everyday uses, the first plugins, image and video tools, and the ethical and copyright questions AI raises. Four readers contributed case studies.
Eleven chapters
- Embracing the age of artificial intelligence
- Understanding the ChatGPT revolution
- Asking the right questions: crafting effective prompts
- The importance of training your model
- ChatGPT beyond the workplace
- Seamless integration of GPT models into apps
- Mastering ChatGPT to future-proof your career
- The future of ChatGPT with plugins
- Beyond ChatGPT: AI tools for images, video and audio
- Broader implications of AI and GPT models on society
- AI ethics, privacy and copyright law
Get the book
As an Amazon Associate, Holistic Hybrid earns from qualifying purchases.
- Published
- April 18, 2023 (Kindle) · April 25, 2023 (print)
- French edition
- ChatGPT : Le Guide Pour Débutant · June 2023
- Publisher
- Holistic Hybrid
- ISBN
- 978-1-7389518-2-6 (paperback) · 978-1-7389518-3-3 (hardcover) · 978-1-7389518-0-2 (eBook)
- Revised
- 2026 edition: links updated, factual corrections
What readers say on Amazon
“Thanks to this book, I was able to improve my prompts and can now easily incorporate ChatGPT into my daily work.”
“This handbook is written to be easily digestible for the beginner. As a teacher I need to be fluent in the same AI technologies that my students are using.”
“I found the section on crafting effective prompts particularly useful, as it helped me refine my approach to working with ChatGPT.”
“I've looked at a number of the how-to ChatGPT guides, (one was only 24 pages!) and this one stands out.”
Short excerpts from reviews on Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, quoted as written.
The book's method, one question at a time
What does GPT stand for, and what do generative pre-trained transformers do?
GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It is a model that writes new text one piece at a time (generative), learned most of what it knows by reading a huge amount of text before anyone asked it a…
4 min read
Why should you give ChatGPT a role before you ask?
Opening a prompt with a role, such as "You are an experienced bookkeeper for small businesses", tells ChatGPT which kind of expertise, vocabulary and point of view to draw on.
4 min read
How do you create a ChatGPT account and find your way around it?
You create a free ChatGPT account at chat.openai.com, confirm your details, and land on a page with a message box at the bottom and a sidebar of past conversations on the left.
4 min read
What is the simple, improved, refined prompt method?
The simple, improved, refined method is a way to build a prompt in three passes: start with the bare request, improve it by naming the audience, topic and channel, then refine it by adding the steps,…
4 min read
Why can't you trust everything ChatGPT says?
ChatGPT writes the most plausible-sounding reply to your prompt, not a checked fact, so it sometimes invents names, numbers, quotes and sources with complete confidence.
4 min read
How do you make your first image with DALL·E 2?
Sign in to DALL·E at labs.openai.com with your OpenAI account, type a one-sentence description that names the subject, the style, the lighting and the framing, and press Generate to get four images for one…
3 min read
Who is behind OpenAI, and why does Microsoft have such a big stake?
OpenAI is controlled by a nonprofit, OpenAI Inc., whose board oversees a "capped-profit" company that raises money from investors and employs most of the staff.
4 min read
What are Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta and Salesforce each doing with AI in 2023?
Microsoft is putting OpenAI's models into Bing, Edge and its Office apps under the name Copilot; Google has opened its Bard chatbot widely and runs it, along with many other products, on its new PaLM 2 model;…
5 min read
Why should you learn about AI now?
Because AI tools that write, summarize and explain are already free or cheap, are arriving inside the apps people use at work, and employers say their staff will need new skills to use them.
4 min read
Can ChatGPT book your restaurant or trip?
Not by itself. With the plugins beta, ChatGPT Plus subscribers can ask the OpenTable or Expedia plugin to find restaurants, hotels and flights in conversation, but the final booking still happens on…
4 min read
How much context should a prompt include?
Include enough context that a capable stranger could do the job well without asking you a follow-up question: who the answer is for, the situation, the goal, the format and any limits.
4 min read
Which jobs will AI change the most, and which skills protect you?
AI changes tasks before it changes whole jobs, and the tasks most affected are routine writing, record-keeping and information processing, which is why clerical roles top employers' lists of declining jobs.
4 min read
How do you future-proof your career with AI?
Build skill in using AI tools on your own real work, pair it with the judgment and people skills employers say are rising in value, and keep visible proof of what you have done.
4 min read
What new AI jobs are appearing?
Alongside the engineers who build AI systems, three newer kinds of work are showing up in job listings and company reports: prompt engineers who find and document the best ways to instruct models, AI trainers…
4 min read
How can ChatGPT improve your workflow?
ChatGPT saves the most time on repeated writing and summarizing tasks, such as first drafts, meeting notes and standard replies, where you can quickly check the result.
4 min read
What will Copilot change in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams?
Microsoft 365 Copilot will let you ask for a first draft in Word, an analysis or chart in Excel, a slide deck in PowerPoint and a meeting recap in Teams, using GPT-4 together with the files, emails and…
4 min read
How do you make your first call to the ChatGPT API?
Create an OpenAI API key, store it in an environment variable, install the openai Python library and send gpt-3.5-turbo a list of messages that starts with a system message; the reply comes back with the…
4 min read
Can ChatGPT help you make better decisions?
Yes, as a structured thinking partner: ChatGPT is good at laying out options, suggesting criteria you forgot, building a weighted decision matrix and arguing against your favorite choice.
4 min read
How do you brainstorm with ChatGPT?
Run the session in rounds: ask ChatGPT for many ideas with no judging, then add your real constraints, then ask it to combine the best ones, and only at the end ask it to critique and rank them.
3 min read
How do you save time with an AI assistant?
Give an AI assistant like ChatGPT the first draft of routine work, such as sorting email, turning rough notes into action items and sketching a daily plan, and keep the reviewing, deciding and sending for…
3 min read
How did science fiction shape what we expect from ChatGPT?
Decades of stories, from Asimov's rule-bound robots to HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, taught us to picture talking machines as minds with their own goals, perfect logic and a hidden agenda.
4 min read
Can AI analyse your data without coding?
Yes, increasingly: with ChatGPT's Code Interpreter beta, you upload a file such as a CSV of sales, ask questions in plain English, and ChatGPT writes and runs Python code behind the scenes to compute answers…
4 min read
Why do AI tools still need human supervision?
AI tools such as ChatGPT and its plugins can misread a request, invent details and sound sure of themselves while doing it, and once a plugin can send, book or buy, a mistake stops being a wrong sentence and…
4 min read
How did OpenAI get from GPT-1 to GPT-4?
OpenAI kept one core recipe from GPT-1 in 2018 to GPT-4 in 2023: a Transformer network pre-trained to predict the next word on huge amounts of text.
4 min read
How do you prepare ChatGPT before asking for anything?
Before your real request, send a short briefing that tells ChatGPT who you are, what you are trying to achieve, which limits apply and what shape the answers should take, then ask it to confirm or ask…
3 min read
How do you ask ChatGPT for a specific format?
Name the format and spell out its parts: for a table, list the columns; for a checklist, say how to group the items; for an email, give the sections and mark where your own details go.
3 min read
What does a good prompt look like for a marketer?
A good marketing prompt reads like a creative brief: it names the product, the audience, the goal, the channels, the brand voice and the deliverables, and it says what the answer should look like.
3 min read
What does a good prompt look like for an educator?
A good teaching prompt names the role you want ChatGPT to play, describes your students and your learning goal, and spells out the format, timing and materials of what you need.
4 min read
Can AI make videos and music today?
Yes, in short pieces. Runway's Gen-2 turns a text prompt or an image into a four-second video clip, and Meta's new AudioCraft models generate music and sound effects from a written description, but the…
4 min read
What does a good prompt look like for a researcher?
A good research prompt asks ChatGPT to help you map a question, its terms, subtopics, methods and search strings, rather than to hand you finished citations, and it forbids invented sources outright.
4 min read
How do Midjourney, DALL·E 2 and Stable Diffusion compare?
Midjourney gives the most polished, stylized images with the least effort, through a paid Discord subscription.
4 min read
What does a good prompt look like for a developer?
A good coding prompt reads like a small ticket: the language and version, the surrounding code, the exact interface, the constraints, the test cases that define "done", and a request to explain the choices…
3 min read
What does a good prompt look like for a student?
A good student prompt asks ChatGPT to act as a tutor, not a ghostwriter: it names the course, the assignment and what you already understand, then asks for explanations, questions and feedback instead of…
4 min read
What does a good prompt look like for a small-business owner?
A good prompt for a small-business owner gives ChatGPT the numbers, the business context and the decision you are facing, then asks for a short list of options with the reasoning and the calculations shown.
3 min read
How do you plan a canoe trip with ChatGPT?
Describe the whole trip to ChatGPT, including the group, skill levels, dates, distances and gear, and ask for a draft plan with a checklist and open questions.
4 min read
How do you give ChatGPT the right context?
Give ChatGPT context in order of impact: first the purpose of the answer, then who it is for, then the facts and limits only you know, then any source material, and only after that format and tone.
4 min read
What is iterative prompting?
Iterative prompting means improving a ChatGPT answer over several rounds in the same conversation: you read each reply, work out what was missing, and add only that in your next message.
4 min read
How do you ask ChatGPT to think step by step?
Add a plain instruction to your message, such as "Work through this step by step, then give the final answer on its own line," and, for harder problems, tell ChatGPT what the steps should be.
4 min read
How do you get ChatGPT to cite sources?
If you have ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise, choose Browse with Bing under GPT-4 and ask it to search the web and link each claim to the page it came from; those links point to real pages it just read.
4 min read
How do you control response length and tone?
Say exactly how long the answer should be, in units ChatGPT can hit (sentences, bullet points or paragraphs), and describe the tone with two or three concrete words plus the reader it is for.
3 min read
Who owns AI-generated content?
In the United States, material produced by an AI from a prompt is not protected by copyright, because copyright requires a human author; only the parts a person creates, selects, arranges or meaningfully…
5 min read
Which advanced prompts help HR, finance, sales and project managers?
The prompts that help most give ChatGPT a role, the business context, one clear deliverable, firm limits and an output format, with placeholders you fill in for each job.
3 min read
What is BloombergGPT, and what does a domain model change?
BloombergGPT is a 50-billion-parameter language model that Bloomberg trained from scratch on a mix of its own financial archives and general public text, described in a paper posted in March 2023.
4 min read
How can GPT-4 help with everyday life?
GPT-4 is most useful at home for the small jobs that eat your time, such as turning what is in your fridge into a dinner plan, drafting a clear letter or sharing chores fairly.
3 min read
Can ChatGPT plan your budget, meals or workouts?
Yes, as an organizer: ChatGPT can turn your own numbers, food preferences and schedule into a tidy monthly budget, a weekly menu with a shopping list, or a beginner exercise calendar.
3 min read
How do you learn a language with ChatGPT?
Use ChatGPT as a conversation partner with rules: tell it your level, the topic and exactly how to correct you, then chat in the language a little every day.
4 min read
How do you check a travel itinerary that ChatGPT suggests?
Treat the itinerary as a first draft and run a verification pass: list every claim that depends on the real world, such as opening days and hours, travel times, prices, bookings and seasonal closures, and…
3 min read
What are the in-demand jobs of the AI era?
Employers expect the fastest growth in roles built on technology and data, led by AI and machine learning specialists, followed by sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts and information…
4 min read
How do you adapt when your field changes fast?
Separate what you know how to do from the tools you happen to do it with, then take stock: list your skills, mark which ones carry over to new tools and roles, and pick one gap to close at a time.
4 min read
What does responsible AI use look like for you?
For an individual, responsible AI use means checking what the tool tells you, protecting other people's data as well as your own, staying honest about where AI helped, and keeping a person accountable for…
4 min read
What replaced ChatGPT plugins, and how do you do the same jobs now?
GPTs replaced plugins. Custom versions of ChatGPT can browse the web, analyze data, make images and, through "actions," call outside services the way plugins did.
4 min read
Does the book's career advice still hold one year on?
Mostly, yes: the core advice in *A Beginner's Guide to ChatGPT* (keep learning, practise with AI on real tasks, sharpen judgment and creativity, and lean on transferable skills) holds up well a year later.
5 min read
How do memory and custom instructions change the 'prepare ChatGPT first' step?
They take over the parts of the preparation that never change: custom instructions hold your standing role and preferences, and memory keeps useful facts ChatGPT learns from your chats.
4 min read
Does the role, context, task method still work with GPT-4o?
Yes. GPT-4o is faster and handles files, photos and other languages better, but it still answers the question you ask, so giving it a role, your context, a clear task and a format still makes the difference…
3 min read
How do you apply the book's 'always verify' rule to ChatGPT search?
With ChatGPT search, verifying means checking the links rather than hunting for sources yourself: open the cited page for each claim you will act on, confirm that the page really says it, and check its date…
4 min read
How do you turn the book's prompt templates into a reusable project or GPT?
Split each template into the part that never changes (the role, your business context and the output format) and the part that changes every time (the task).
4 min read
Which tools from the book still exist two years on, and what replaced the others?
The core of the book, ChatGPT and the prompting method, is unchanged, but two of the services it describes have changed shape: ChatGPT plugins were shut down in April 2024 and replaced by GPTs, and Google's…
4 min read
How does the book's canoe-trip prompt look rewritten for 2025 models?
The book's method still holds: give a role, the full context, a clear task and an output format, then iterate and verify.
4 min read
What does the book's 'human supervision' rule mean for AI agents?
The book's rule is that AI tools which take actions are useful but fallible, so a person checks what they do and keeps the judgment calls.
4 min read
Do role prompts still help with GPT-5?
Yes, but for a narrower reason than many people think. A role helps GPT-5 when it carries real information about audience, standards and tone; it does little for factual accuracy on its own, so pair it with…
4 min read
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