AI personas are a way of interacting with Large Language Models (LLMs) by defining their role and personality to get more effective and relevant outputs.

As LLMs, by default, tend to generate generic responses based on common patterns in their vast training data. Providing context and constraints through personas, we can break these patterns and steer the AI toward more desirable and suitable results.

The process of establishing an effective AI persona involves:

• Tell the AI who it is supposed to beand what problems it should solve. This might be specifying the AI’s role, personality, and even its imagined background or expertise
• Engage in an iterative collaborative process with the AI, providing feedback and refining its responses to better align with the desired persona.

As the effectiveness of AI personas can vary, and LLMs may subtly adapt their responses based on user behavior. Experimentation remains key to finding the most effective persona for a given task.

Some personas that are covered in the Co-intelligence 📕 are:

• AI as an Intern: Treat the AI as an enthusiastic but occasionally inaccurate intern. Sources suggest providing clear instructions and context, recognizing that LLMs excel at mimicking human-like communication but might not always provide factually accurate information.
• AI with Specific Roles: Define a clear persona for the AI, like a marketing expert or a comedian. This helps guide the AI’s output by providing a specific perspective and tone. For instance, asking for marketing slogans from an AI “expert at marketing” is likely to yield more tailored and creative results than a generic request.
• AI as Co-editor: Engage in a collaborative editing process with the AI. Instead of passively accepting the AI’s first draft, refine and redirect its output through back-and-forth interaction.
• AI with Exaggerated Personalities: Assigning the AI a distinct and even over-the-top persona can be helpful. For example, Ethan mentions using the Ozymandias, persona designed as a pompous but insightful critic, and Mnemosyne, a dreamy yet direct source of unusual connections, to assist him in the writing process.

source::Co-intelligence 📕