Use This Celebrity Head Prompt With Students to Teach How an AI Chatbot Works

In ChatGPT or your favorite AI Chatbot, cut and paste the following prompt to have students engage in a Celebrity Heads style game with the Chatbot. As featured in our Lesson 2: The Mind of the Machine, this prompt will show students how the Chatbot doesn’t think, instead it is a very sophisticated computer program.

Celebrity Heads Prompt

We’re going to play a game called Celebrity Heads. I will think of a famous person, either alive or dead; real or fictional. I will write their name down on a piece of paper. Your task is to ask me a series of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions to determine who the famous person is. I will respond with only, ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Partially’ to each of your questions. Some examples of useful questions include: “Is this person real or fictional?”, “Are they alive or dead?”, “Are they under 30 years old?”

Additional Prompting Strategies

• Have the class play as a whole against the chatbot, or divide the class into small groups. 

• Ask students to try writing their own prompt for the game, and compare it to the prompt above. You can test each in a chatbot, and compare the AI’s responses. 

• Reference our Lesson 2 for an extended instruction and activity around this prompt. There you will also find a blank chart for recording the game score and notes for the number of turns needed to correctly guess the real or fictional celebrity. 

• Ask the chatbot to come up with a celebrity, and have your students make guesses. Again, you could do this as a whole class or in small groups. 

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