Remember the old TV series, "Star Trek"? Do you recall the episodes where Captain Kirk would outthink an android or computer by asking it a series of questions? Well, believe it or not, that is an effective strategy for dealing with today's Artificial Intelligence.
There are a few different processes that could be used to have a large language model answer a difficult question by leading up to it with a series of simpler questions:
- Step-by-step questioning: This involves breaking down the difficult question into a logical series of simpler questions that build on each other and provide context, eventually leading up to the final difficult question. The model is essentially "walked through" the reasoning step-by-step via the questions.
- Providing background information: You can provide the model with background information and facts relevant to the difficult question in a summarized format before asking the final question. This gives the model context to draw from when answering.
- Query reformulation: With this approach, you start with a simplified version of the difficult question, get the answer, then iteratively modify and expand the question to get closer to the actual difficult question. The model leverages information obtained from previous iterations.
- Explanatory questioning: Here you ask a series of questions that explain aspects of the concepts involved in the difficult question, elucidating the key factors and considerations needed to reason through and answer the final question.
So in summary, various tactics of questioning the model incrementally and providing contextual information can aid large language models in tackling difficult questions and reasoning challenges. The step-by-step approach leads the model through the logical reasoning chain to arrive at the answer.
Here is a real world example of that process. There is a legal document in the Real Estate Books AI library titled "Privacy Policy". Note how I was able to get the system to give me the information I was looking for from this policy:
Question: What is the explanation of your privacy policy? Question: Can you summarize the privacy policy for me? Question: What information does the privacy policy document provide? Question: What information does the privacy policy provide about the personal data collected? Now, this is the actual question I wanted answered: Question: What happens to the personal data collected according to the privacy policy? Of course, the next question would be, "Why didn't you say that in the first place?" But I doubt the AI would understand the question.
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