Custom GPTs: Prompt Engineering on Steroids

Welcome to the amazing world of custom GPTs, where the versatility of generative AI meets the precision of personalization. Today, we’ll explore the magic behind customizing GPTs, propelling prompt engineering — essentially, you "teaching" AI how you want it to function — into an elite toolset. 

PREFER TO WATCH AND LISTEN INSTEAD? You're in luck! Click on our video component:

Are you ready to test the waters on how to create and use these custom AI models? It's all about learning ways to turn everyday interactions into personalized conversations that enhance the power of AI in different areas.

Prepare to enter a place where AI doesn't just understand but also connects with your unique needs, paving the way for a future where AI's possibilities are not only achieved — but surpassed.

So, What Are Custom GPTs? 

A custom GPT, commonly referred to as a GPT, is like a smart robot that is programmed with a plethora of knowledge. Its sole purpose is to eagerly find the answers to any question you throw its way. When you ask it something, it uses what it has learned in the past and can research to enhance its understanding to create and generate intel that can answer your questions or help with what you need.

Pun intended... In earlier lessons, you learned that GPT (as in ChatGPT, the massively popular platform developed by OpenAI) stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformers. To review, a generative pre-trained transformer is a type of AI model that's designed to output text based on a vast dataset it was built with (or "trained on"). Hence, a custom GPT is just a model with lots of knowledge on a specific and very precise purpose and category , so it can meet specific needs and solve particular problems.

The customization in these tools means they can offer:

• Personalized communication

• Targeted content creation 

• Specialized data analysis

Who Uses Custom GPTs? 

Custom GPTs aren’t only for the tech set. We can all benefit from them, especially if we have a specific (or ongoing) task or problem we want AI to help us solve. Here are some custom GPT use case scenarios:

👩‍💼 Businesses and Enterprises

Custom GPTs can help power a company’s customer service through personalized chatbots, enhance and amplify marketing content, or simplify time-consuming tasks.

🧑‍🏫 Educators and Students

If it’s a personalized learning experience, on-topic review exercises to prep for a test or presentation, or even help with grading and feedback (teachers, unite!), custom GPTs present an A+ option.

🔬 Researchers and Academics

The academic world is a little brighter thanks to custom GPTs that can analyze large volumes of text, automate the output of research materials, or facilitate language translation for cross-linguistic studies.

💻 Developers and Technologists

When these tech folks need natural language understanding and generation, such as voice-activated assistants or AI-driven content platforms, custom GPTs can be programmed to step in.

🏡 CustomGPTs at Home

These can absolutely be leveraged for everyday home use — there are so many practical applications:

• Personal assistants: Just think about having the ability to not only manage but master schedules, provide superior homework help for your kids (even if you couldn't get past fractions yourself), and embrace hobby-related advice and ideas to power your down-time? Complete game-changer.

• Smart home devices: Integration with smart home ecosystems means smarter, more personalized control over things like home security, entertainment, and energy efficiency. Sign us up!

• Lifestyle and health: Turn to a custom GPT to create a diet and workout program customized to your personal health data. You can also access mental wellness support through conversational AI trained to serve as an initial sounding board as you work on connecting with a pro. It's the perfect fusion of mind, body, and soul (with a little tech mixed in for good measure).

As AI technology becomes a bigger part of our everyday gadgets and services, the demand and availability of custom AI models to make life easier at home will explode. Gotta love it!

Benefits of Custom GPTs 

Custom GPTs offer a vast array of benefits over other AI solutions: 

😕 Generic solutions may struggle with niche contexts, industry jargon, and specialized knowledge.

😍 Custom GPTs can deliver more accurate information relevant to specific industries and domains. 

This type of on-target results can help ensure that businesses and users benefit from interactions that truly understand and cater to their unique needs. Custom GPTs are designed specifically for efficiency, often requiring less computational power for task-specific operations, which translates into cost savings and enhanced performance in processing complex data or queries.

Think of custom GPTs like a Swiss Army knife for businesses, uniquely sharpened for each task. They're like having a tailor-made tool that not only fits the job perfectly but also works faster, costs less over time, and can do many different jobs in various industries. This means businesses can talk to customers more effectively, keep information safer, stay ahead of competitors by innovating, and grow without heavy investments in new tools for every task.

DIVE DEEPER: How Custom GPTs Can Give Your Business the Competitive Edge

How to Create a Custom GPT

Creating a custom Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) involves several steps, from understanding the prerequisites to training and fine-tuning your model. This guide will walk you through the essentials, ensuring you have a clear roadmap for developing a GPT tailored to your specific needs.

In essence, creating a custom GPT is like prompt engineering — on steroids. You’re drilling down to the heart of what you want your GPT to learn and teaching it from the ground up. Of course, that requires a degree of specialized skill and knowledge from you, the developer. 

And yes, we've got a breakdown of what you need to do:

• Determine your requirements: Before diving into the technicalities, clearly define your objective — what you want your custom GPT to achieve. Whether it's generating specific content, answering domain-specific questions, or automating particular tasks, ask and ye shall receive.

• Collect your data: The heart of a custom GPT is the data it learns from. Collect a dataset that is relevant to your objective. This could be text from articles, customer service interactions, technical manuals, or any other sources pertinent to your goal. Think of what you'd hand over to a human you may have stepping into a similar role.

• Prepare your dataset: Ensure your data is clean (free from errors, duplicates, and irrelevant information) and organized in a format that's easily digestible for training purposes. This might involve data preprocessing steps like removing special characters and standardizing formats.

• Understand tokenization basics: Don't worry -- we'll define tokenization... That’s the process of breaking down text and materials into smaller units — namely, words, phrases or symbols. These are known as tokens. Tokenization helps the model grasp the structure of the language, including syntax and semantics.

• Choose the right tools: Leverage tools and platforms that facilitate GPT model training. Options range from open-source libraries like Hugging Face’s Transformers to cloud-based AI platforms offering more extensive resources and support.

Kickstarting GPT Model Training

Now it’s time to begin training your very own GPT. The good news is, you don’t have to start from scratch. Like a baker making a cake but beginning with a popular, time-tested recipe, you can start with a pre-trained base model. That GPT should be close to your needs in terms of language understanding. This approach saves time and resources by building on existing knowledge.

To make your GPT uniquely yours, you’ll need to train it on your specific dataset. That’s where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. If you do it properly, your custom GPT will be a helpful companion that learns as you use it. If you don’t, it can be a bit like a hyperactive squirrel, delivering incorrect information, getting off track, or not learning what’s relevant to your needs. 

In training a custom GPT, “weights” are numbers inside the model that help decide how important different pieces of information are. These numbers change during training to help the model get better at making predictions or creating text, based on its learning from mistakes.

As you proceed, you’ll need to adjust factors such as learning rate, batch size, and the number of epochs to optimize performance. 

Woah. This is starting to sound complicated, isn’t it? It might help to understand some of these words:

• Learning rate: The speed at which your model learns from data

• Batch size: The number of training samples that the model processes before its weights are updated

• Epochs: The number of times the entire training dataset is passed through the model to adjust its weights and improve performance. The number of epochs is a crucial metric, or hyperparameter. Too few epochs might result in underfitting (where the model has not learned enough to make accurate predictions). Too many epochs can lead to overfitting (where the model learns the training data too well, including noise and outliers, which can degrade its performance on new, unseen data).

Getting Your Custom GPT to Work

Putting your custom GPT to the test involves evaluating its output for accuracy, relevance, and smoothness using different data. Tweaking training settings, enriching your data, or refining the dataset are steps for improvement. 

Successful models then become part of your tools, requiring setup for user interaction or system integration. Continuous performance monitoring and updates will keep your GPT aligned with evolving needs or fresh insights.

Tools and Platforms for Developing Custom GPTs

Once you’ve decided you want to dive into the exciting world of creating custom GPTs for fun or — more likely — profit (hello, GPT Store! 🤑), you don’t have to go it alone. A host of resources and platforms exist for this purpose. 

Here’s an overview of some of the most popular tools for developing Custom GPTs, whether you’re a novice or a seasoned AI researcher (or hope to be one someday): 

• Hugging Face's Transformers Library

• Google's TensorFlow

• PyTorch

• OpenAI API

• Microsoft Azure AI Platform

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) SageMaker

• Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning

How to Get the Most Out of Custom GPTs

We decided to call this lesson “Prompt Engineering on Steroids” for a reason. Creating a custom GPT is kind of like that — it’s taking everything we know about prompt engineering and applying it to generate a stronger, better, more amped-up and useful AI model.

If you’re eager to try your hand developing a GPT at work or at home, here are 9 tips that can help you achieve your goals and work smarter, not harder.

🎯 Define clear objectives: Tell your GPT what you wish to achieve, how you will interact with it, and the outcome(s) you expect.

💻 Learn prompt engineering: The art of prompt engineering can greatly improve the quality of your interactions with a custom GPT. (Helpful hint: We provided some guides to help with effective prompt engineering in Lesson 4.)

📋 Review and refine: Think through the initial results to craft specific (valuable!) feedback that can work toward perfecting your prompts and the model’s responses. Continuous testing will most certainly help improve accuracy.

🔎 Understand AI's limits: It's stupendous, yes, but even the best custom GPT will have some limitations. It all depends on how much data and experience it has. It helps to set set realistic expectations for its performance.

🤔 Leverage feedback mechanisms: If your platform allows it, use feedback mechanisms to inform the model about the quality of its responses. This can help in training the model to better suit your specific requirements over time.

Customize and personalize: Where possible, take advantage of customization features to tailor your GPT’s responses even further. Details matter!

Stay updated: AI technology evolves rapidly — good news since new features and improvements can enhance your user experience. Subscribe to newsletters (like ours!) to stay on top of the latest in GPT and AI tech.

Integrate with other tools: If possible, integrate your custom GPT with other software and tools you use. This can streamline workflows and increase productivity. Customize and personalize:

🕊 Ensure ethical use: Even if this is something you're using personally that may not be forward-facing, it's important to be aware of issues concerning privacy, bias, and the potential impact of generated content Using custom GPTs responsibly ensures their benefits are maximized without unintended consequences.

The Future of Custom GPTs: Harnessing the Potential of This Incredible Technology

The future of custom GPTs is not just promising, it's pulsating with potential — the potential to essentially redefine our world with quick-thinking problem-solving tools and right-on and ready resources.

This journey invites us to join the party of innovation, embracing the notion to "Work smarter, not harder," and exploring a tomorrow where custom GPTs are central to unlocking our greatest possibilities. 

Oh, and having the ability to consider yourself a certified AI advocate, one who is able to chat knowledgeably about ChatGPT and more will make you the envy of all your friends and colleagues (and lots of fun at cocktail parties!).

We’re rounding the home stretch here. In our next lesson, we’ll explore the best ways to implement AI at work and at home to improve workflows and maximize productivity. Then you can consider yourself a bonafide AI champion.