Prompt Engineering for Generative AI • James Phoenix, Mike Taylor & Phil Winder • GOTO 2025

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. #GOTOcon #GOTObookclub http://gotopia.tech/bookclub Read the full transcription of the interview here: https://gotopia.tech/episodes/360 James Phoenix - Co-Author of “Prompt Engineering for Generative AI” @jamesaphoenix Mike Taylor - Co-Author of “Prompt Engineering for Generative AI” Phil Winder - Author of “Reinforcement Learning” & CEO of Winder.AI @philwinder263 RESOURCES James https://x.com/jamesaphoenix12 https://github.com/jamesaphoenix https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesphoenix https://understandingdata.com Mike http://saxifrage.xyz https://twitter.com/hammer_mt https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjt145 Phil https://twitter.com/DrPhilWinder https://linkedin.com/in/drphilwinder https://github.com/philwinder https://winder.ai https://winder.ai/blog Links https://brightpool.dev https://karpathy.ai https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6654000 https://gemini.google.com https://www.postgresql.org https://www.mongodb.com https://dreambooth.github.io https://github.com/microsoft/LoRA https://claude.ai https://www.langchain.com/langgraph https://cursordevkit.com https://youtu.be/W-JX9j8idpQ https://youtu.be/Pv0cfsastFs https://youtu.be/MznD2DzlQCc https://youtu.be/vIGIQZmwcqo https://youtu.be/NDWdkmvX91E https://youtu.be/la4kc57F6jU https://youtu.be/Yk0_LWd0WQA DESCRIPTION Large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have unprecedented potential. Because they have been trained on all the public text and images on the internet, they can make useful contributions to a wide variety of tasks. And with the barrier to entry greatly reduced today, practically any developer can harness LLMs and diffusion models to tackle problems previously unsuitable for automation. With this book, you'll gain a solid foundation in generative AI, including how to apply these models in practice. When first integrating LLMs and diffusion models into their workflows, most developers struggle to coax reliable enough results from them to use in automated systems. Authors James Phoenix and Mike Taylor show you how a set of principles called prompt engineering can enable you to work effectively with AI. Learn how to empower AI to work for you. This book explains: • The structure of the interaction chain of your program's AI model and the fine-grained steps in between • How AI model requests arise from transforming the application problem into a document completion problem in the model training domain • The influence of LLM and diffusion model architecture—and how to best interact with it • How these principles apply in practice in the domains of natural language processing, text and image generation, and code * Book description: © O'Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/prompt-engineering-for/9781098153427 TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 02:27 Key aspects of Prompt Engineering & its definition 08:22 Misconceptions about Prompt Engineering 10:21 Practical applications & tools 13:43 5 principles of prompting 26:27 Balancing creativity & specificity in AI models 32:42 RAG: The power of iterative steps, query planning & routing in AI systems 42:59 Understanding agentic systems: Beyond prompt-based AI 51:56 Outro RECOMMENDED BOOKS James Phoenix & Mike Taylor • Prompt Engineering for Generative AI • https://amzn.to/43cFDqO Phil Winder • Reinforcement Learning • https://amzn.to/3t1S1VZ Kelleher & Tierney • Data Science (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) • https://amzn.to/3AQmIRg Lakshmanan, Görner & Gillard • Practical Machine Learning for Computer Vision • https://amzn.to/3m9HNjP https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #PromptEngineering #Prompting #GenerativeAI #RAG #RetrievalAugmentedGeneration #DAG #DirectAcyclicGraphs #ChatGPT #ReinforcementLearning #DSPyOptimizers #GenAI #AIUseCase #ArtificialIntelligence #ML #DataScience #JamesPhoenix #MikeTaylor #PhilWinder #BookClub CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1