Unlike traditional coding jobs, the prompt engineering role is targeted to anyone with basic programming skills and familiarity with large language models such as ChatGPT or Bard.

与传统的程序员工作不同，提示工程师角色针对具有基本编程技能和熟悉大型语言模型（如ChatGPT或Bard）的人。

The AI Job That Pays Up to $335K—and You Don’t Need a Computer Engineering Background

高薪AI工作，年薪可达33.5万美元，无需计算机工程背景

Unlike traditional coding jobs, the prompt engineering role is targeted to anyone with basic programming skills and familiarity with large language models such as ChatGPT or Bard.

与传统的程序员工作不同，提示工程师角色针对具有基本编程技能和熟悉大型语言模型（如ChatGPT或Bard）的人。

BY NIK POPLI [APRIL 14, 2023 2:20 PM EDT]

A new kind of AI job is emerging—and it pays six-figure salaries and doesn’t require a degree in computer engineering, or even advanced coding skills.

一种新型的AI工作正在出现，它支付六位数的薪水，而且不需要计算机工程学位，甚至不需要高级代码编写技能。

With the rise in generative artificial intelligence¹, a host of² companies are now looking to hire “prompt engineers” who are tasked with training the emerging³ crop of⁴ AI tools to deliver more accurate and relevant responses to the questions real people are likely to pose.

随着生成式人工智能的兴起，许多公司现在都在寻找“提示工程师”，他们的任务是训练新出现的AI工具，以便更准确、更相关地回答真实人可能提出的问题。

Some of these jobs can even pay up to $335,000 a year.

这些工作中的一些甚至每年可以支付高达335,000美元。

What does a prompt engineer do?

提示工程师做什么？

Anna Bernstein, a 29-year-old prompt engineer at generative AI firm Copy$.$ai in New York, is one of the few people already working in this new field. Her role involves writing text-based prompts that she feeds into the back end⁵ of AI tools so they can do things such as generate a blog post or sales email with the proper tone and accurate information. She doesn’t need to write any technical code to do this; instead, she types instructions to the AI model to help refine⁶ responses.

现年29岁的安娜·伯恩斯坦（Anna Bernstein）在纽约的生成式AI公司Copy$.$ai担任提示工程师，是这个新兴领域为数不多的从业人员之一。她的职责是编写文本提示，将其输入AI工具的后端，以便执行诸如生成具有适当语气和准确信息的博客文章或销售电子邮件之类的操作。她不需要编写任何技术代码来执行此操作；相反，她键入指令以帮助AI模型优化响应。

“There aren’t many of us prompt engineers, and for a long time it really felt like it was just me,” Bernstein says. She joined Copy$.$ai in September 2021, about a year before OpenAI’s ChatGPT went viral⁷ for its uncanny⁸ ability to generate elegant writing and answer almost any question. “At the time, the term ‘prompt engineer’ didn’t exist, and they were unsure whether it was even a role that could exist.”

伯恩斯坦说：“我们这些提示工程师并不多，很长一段时间里，我真的觉得只有我一个人。”她于2021年9月加入Copy$.$ai，正是OpenAI的ChatGPT因其优雅的写作能力和回答几乎任何问题的能力而广为人知之前的一年。“当时，‘提示工程师’这个词还不存在，他们甚至不确定这样的职位是否可能存在。”

Bernstein, who studied English in college, was a copywriter⁹ and historical research assistant before becoming a prompt engineer. “I had no tech background whatsoever,” she says. “But to have a humanities background in this field seems to me like a triumph¹⁰, especially since part of the point of developing AI is to imitate¹¹ human thought.”

伯恩斯坦在大学时期学习英语，之前是一名撰稿人和历史研究助理，后来成为了一名提示工程师。“我之前根本没有技术背景，”她说。“但在这个领域拥有人文背景对我来说似乎是一种胜利，尤其是考虑到开发AI的部分目的是模仿人类思维。”

A surge in AI jobs

AI工作激增

Prompt engineering is now considered one of the hottest tech jobs as companies look for ways to help train and adapt AI tools to get the most out of new large language models, which can provide results that are not always correct or appropriate.

随着公司寻找方法来帮助训练和调整AI工具，以便充分挖掘新的大型语言模型，提示工程现在被认为是最炙手可热的技术工作之一，这些模型提供的结果并不总是正确或合适的。

It’s part of a dramatic¹² increase in demand for workers who understand and can work with AI tools. According to LinkedIn data shared with TIME, the number of posts referring to “generative AI” has increased 36-fold¹³ in comparison to¹⁴ last year, and the number of job postings containing “GPT” rose by 51% between 2021 and 2022. Some of these job postings are being targeted to anyone, even those without a background in computer science or tech.

这是对理解和使用AI工具的工作人员需求急剧增加的一部分。根据LinkedIn与TIME分享的数据，提到“生成型AI”的帖子数量与去年相比增加了36倍，包含“GPT”的职位发布在2021年和2022年之间增长了51%。一些职位发布甚至针对任何人，即使没有计算机科学或技术背景。

It’s too soon to tell how big prompt engineering will become, but a range of¹⁵ companies and industries are beginning to recruit for these positions. Anthropic, a Google-backed¹⁶ AI startup¹⁷, is advertising salaries up to $335,000 for a “Prompt Engineer and Librarian” in San Francisco. Applicants must “have a creative hacker spirit and love solving puzzles,” the listing states. Automated document reviewer Klarity is offering as much as $230,000 for a machine learning engineer who can “prompt and understand how to produce the best output” from AI tools.

现在还无法判断提示工程会变得多么重要，但各种公司和行业都开始为这些职位招聘人才。谷歌支持的AI初创公司Anthropic正在招聘旧金山的“提示工程师和图书管理员”，薪水高达335,000美元。申请人必须“具有创造性的黑客精神，喜欢解决难题”，招聘启事这样写道。自动化文档审核软件 Klarity 正在招聘一位机器学习工程师，并提供高达230,000美元的薪酬，该工程师应该能够“提示和理解如何从AI工具中产生最佳输出”。

Outside of the tech world, Boston Children’s Hospital and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton recently advertised for prompt engineering jobs, with the latter paying up to $212,000 for applicants with more than three years of experience implementing¹⁸ machine learning models. Actor Donald Glover is even looking to hire a prompt engineer and prompt animator at his new creative studio.

在科技界之外，波士顿儿童医院和咨询公司Booz Allen Hamilton最近也在打广告招聘提示工程师，后者为拥有三年以上机器学习模型实现经验的申请人支付高达212,000美元的薪水。演员唐纳德·格洛弗（Donald Glover）甚至想在他的新创意工作室雇佣一名提示工程师和提示动画师。

But despite the engineering moniker¹⁹ in the job title, Bernstein says she doesn’t fully consider herself an engineer. “When I first started, we tried to get the term prompt specialists going,” she says. “Then the term prompt engineer as a noun emerged.”

尽管在工作头衔中有工程师这个名字，伯恩斯坦说她并不完全认为自己是一名工程师。“当我刚开始工作时，我们曾试着管这个职位叫提示专家，”她说。“后来提示工程师这个词出现了。”

How to become a prompt engineer

如何成为提示工程师

Rob Lennon, an expert in prompt engineering, began teaching paid online courses through Kajabi in December designed to help the average²⁰ person learn the skills needed for a job in the field. His two courses, which around 2,000 students have already taken, demonstrate²¹ how to format and structure prompts for different types of tasks and domains. “People are clamoring²² for this knowledge,” Lennon says. “It’s kind of like first mover’s advantage.” The courses start at $150 and can cost up to $3,970 for custom²³ training and course certification.

提示工程专家罗布·列侬（Rob Lennon）自去年12月起通过Kajabi在线教授收费课程，旨在帮助普通人学习从事该领域工作所需的技能。他的两门课程已经有约2,000名学生参加，演示了如何为不同类型的任务和领域格式化和构建提示。“人们对这方面的知识趋之若鹜，”列侬说。“这有点像先发优势。”课程起价为150美元，最高可达3,970美元，包括定制培训和课程认证。

But on the other side, some experts believe that the prompt engineering hype²⁴ will burn out once AI becomes more powerful and capable of generating its own prompts. Ethan Mollick, an associate professor²⁵ at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, cautions that those looking to become prompt engineers should consider that much is unknown about the future of the industry.

然而，另一方面，一些专家认为，提示工程的炒作会在AI变得更强大、能够生成自己的提示时消退。宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的副教授伊桑·莫利克（Ethan Mollick）警告说，那些想成为提示工程师的人应该考虑到该行业未来尚不清楚。

“It’s not clear that prompt engineering is going to matter long-term because AI programs are getting better at anticipating²⁶ what users need and generating prompts,” he says. “We also don’t know if there’s a special skill involved for prompt engineering or if it just requires a lot of time spent with chatbots²⁷.”

他说：“目前还不清楚提示工程是否会长期重要，因为AI程序越来越擅长预测用户需求和生成提示。我们也不知道提示工程是否需要特殊技能，还是只需要花大量时间与聊天机器人打交道。”

And the high salaries currently being offered may not last. “These are jobs that probably only 500 people could do right now, so there are these insane²⁸ salaries,” Lennon says. “But in six months, 50,000 people will be able to do that job. The value of this knowledge is greater today than it will be tomorrow.”

而且目前提供的高薪水可能不会持续。“这些工作现在可能只有500人能做，所以有这样畸高的薪水，”列侬说。“但是六个月后，有5万人可以做这份工作。这种知识的价值今天比明天更高。”

Mollick notes that those interested in exploring this field should try experimenting with large language models like GPT+ and Bard to learn their own approach to developing prompts, rather than taking an online course. That’s because AI systems are changing so quickly and the prompts that work today may not work in the future. “What I worry about is people thinking that there is a magical secret to prompting,” he says.

莫利克指出，那些有兴趣探索这个领域的人应该尝试使用大型语言模型（如GPT+和Bard）来了解他们自己的提示开发方法，而不是参加在线课程。这是因为AI系统变化如此之快，今天有效的提示在未来可能就不管用了。“我担心的是人们认为提示有什么神奇的秘密，”他说。

Given the high interest in AI jobs, Karin Kimbrough, chief economist at LinkedIn, says employers may quickly find that they need to compete with one another to hire talent²⁹ to fill these emerging open roles, particularly if they continue to focus on hiring applicants with specific degrees or past job titles. “Given how late-breaking³⁰ all of this is, it’s important to approach³¹ these newly developed roles with a skills-first mindset, by focusing on the actual skills required to do the job,” she says.

考虑到对AI工作的高度关注，LinkedIn首席经济学家卡琳·金布劳（Karin Kimbrough）表示，雇主可能很快会发现他们需要相互竞争，以雇佣填补这些新兴职位的人才，特别是如果他们继续关注招聘具有特定学位或过去职位头衔的申请人。“考虑到这一切都是最新的情况，重要的是要以技能为首的心态来对待这些新开发的角色，关注实际需要的技能，”她说。

Some may find it suspicious that tech companies are willing to dole out³² this kind of cash at a time of massive³³ layoffs³⁴ across the industry. But tech entrepreneurs who champion the power of artificial intelligence believe prompt engineering has the chance to take off³⁵ and shape the future of automation. “The hottest new programming language is English,” Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s former chief of AI, wrote on Twitter.

一些人可能会对科技公司在行业大规模裁员之际愿意支付这种现金感到怀疑。但是，支持人工智能力量的科技企业家们相信，提示工程有机会蓬勃发展并塑造自动化的未来。“最热门的新编程语言是英语，”特斯拉前首席AI官Andrej Karpathy在Twitter上写道。

Even so, not everyone agrees that prompt engineering will catch on at the six-figure salary levels with few educational requirements currently being offered. The trend has also raised questions about why people with a humanities³⁶ background are compensated³⁷ at the same rate as those with a tech background, Bernstein says. Her response: “Why not? If they’re contributing as much to the product.”

尽管如此，并非所有人都认为提示工程会在目前提供的六位数薪水水平以及较低的教育要求下流行起来。这一趋势还引发了关于为什么具有人文背景的人与具有技术背景的人得到相同薪酬的问题。伯恩斯坦回应说：“为什么不呢？如果他们对产品的贡献同样大。”

【Translated by ChatGPT (using model GPT-4)】

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后记

全文由ChatGPT翻译，生词、重点词汇和例句都由ChatGPT生成，我仅承担了微调小部分翻译内容以及找词的工作。ChatGPT翻译完毕之后又自行总结了全文内容，如下：

In summary, prompt engineering is becoming an emerging field full of opportunities. Although there are still many unknowns about the future development of this industry, the role of prompt engineers has started to attract talents from various backgrounds, including those without a computer engineering background. These jobs provide an opportunity for people to participate in AI development and offer lucrative salaries for more individuals. However, concerns about the future of this field and potential market changes mean that those interested in pursuing prompt engineering should closely monitor the industry’s developments and be prepared to adapt to a constantly changing environment.

总之，提示工程正在成为一个充满机遇的新兴领域。尽管关于这个行业未来的发展仍有许多未知之处，但无论如何，提示工程师的角色已经开始吸引了来自各种背景的人才，包括那些没有计算机工程背景的人。这些工作为人们提供了一个参与AI发展的机会，并为更多的人提供了丰厚的薪酬。不过，有关这个领域未来的疑虑和可能的市场变化意味着，那些有兴趣投身提示工程的人需要密切关注行业的发展，并准备适应不断变化的环境。