What is Few-shot Prompting?
TL;DR
A prompting technique where you provide a few input-output examples before asking the AI to perform a task. Effective for improving accuracy.
Few-shot Prompting: Definition & Explanation
Few-shot prompting is a technique where you present a few (typically 2-5) input-output examples to an AI model before asking it to perform the actual task. For example, for sentiment analysis, you might show 'This review is favorable -> Positive' and 'This rating is terrible -> Negative' before providing the text to classify. Compared to zero-shot (no examples), it produces more consistent output format and quality, significantly improving accuracy on specific tasks without fine-tuning the model. Combining it with Chain-of-Thought reasoning examples is also effective. It is one of the most fundamental and impactful prompt engineering techniques.