The Power of Prompt Splitting: A Game-Changing Conversational Technique

One particularly clever technique has come up a lot, that can really improve the depth and quality of your AI interactions: prompt splitting.

What is Prompt Splitting?

Prompt splitting is a simple strategy where you ask the AI to critically examine or debate its own previous response. By requesting the chatbot to challenge/analyze/provide alternative perspectives on its answer, users can get further insights, and even uncover potential biases. It can also be helpful in understanding multiple sides of a complex topic.

Why Claude is Perfect for This Approach?

Prompt Splitting can be used with any chatbot: ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot. But I always recommend Claude. Claude’s tone and reasoning, in my opinion, is the best of the best. And interestingly, I steer clear of ChatGPT, which seems to give the most rudimentary-sounding responses that can be flat or often flat out incorrect. Claude’s ability to engage in nuanced thinking means that when I ask it to critique or debate its own response, it can give me genuinely insightful responses.

How to Use Prompt Splitting

The process is straightforward:

1. Get an initial response from the chatbot

2. Immediately follow up with something like:

   - "Now debate the answer you just gave me"

   - "Split into two personas (you can even describe the two personas, if it would be helpful to your task at hand) and argue different perspectives on this response"

   - "Critically analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your previous answer"

Real-World Example

Imagine you ask Claude about climate change solutions. After receiving an initial response, you could then say: "Now split into two personas - one representing an aggressive pro-green technology stance, and another representing a more cautious economic perspective - and debate the viability of the solutions I just heard."

Benefits of Prompt Splitting

- Reveals potential blind spots in initial reasoning

- Encourages more comprehensive analysis

- Helps us to understand multiple perspectives

- Can uncover nuanced insights missed in the first response

Some Tips

- Be specific in your splitting instructions

- To take it a step further, you can ask for evidence and reasoning for both sides, and can request links and sources

Prompt splitting is more than a “parlor trick” - it's an actual method of getting deeper information from an AI chatbot like Claude. It can also be more fun!

Next time you're “chatting” with an AI, remember: your first answer is just the beginning. Challenge it, debate it, and watch the conversation unfold in really interesting new directions.