Common sense should always prevail during your repeated interactions with an AI tool.
Whenever you’re having a detailed conversation with the likes of ChatGPT and comparable AI tools, a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is never to tell them anything about you that could potentially harm you if it were ever exposed in an AI data leak. It makes all the sense in the world for someone dipping their toes into the world of AI or who’s already experienced with it to never share their personal passwords/credentials, financial account info, government-issued IDs, highly sensitive personal information about you & anyone else, precise info about important addresses and confidential information tied to your job.
It’s far more beneficial to provide ChatGPT with the sort of personal details that can help it understand you better and get a better read on how to help you with your requests. But you never want to give it all the important details that could expose something about you that you want to keep private.
To make sure ChatGPT delivers better answers to your questions and the best results for varied inquiries, make sure you share these important (and safe!) details with it.
The safest, most useful things ChatGPT should know about you
Here’s a primer on the seven personal details you should tell ChatGPT that will not only give you improved personalized answers but also steer it away from turning your personal profile into a vault of sensitive information:
- Your goals: Letting ChatGPT know what you’re trying to accomplish, such as wanting to become a better guitar player or grow your YouTube channel, is definitely worth doing.
- Your level of AI tool expertise: You’ll want to make sure ChatGPT recognizes you as either a beginner, intermediate, advanced or expert chatbot user so it can either stop oversimplifying its answers or overwhelming you with overcomplicated explanations.
- Your response preferences: Using phrases like “give me concise answers with clear examples” or “challenge my assumptions rather than simply agreeing with me” lets ChatGPT know how you prefer to have its responses delivered to you.
- Your constraints: For certain requests, it’s always with mentioning your limitations. Those could include your budget, time, available tools, deadlines, level of experience, etc.
- Your hobbies and interests: Whenever you’re prompting ChatGPT to give you any sort of recommendations, it’s always worth including information about the topics you care about the most.
- Your preferred context for the information you’re seeking: Making sure ChatGPT has a clear idea of what you’re using its information for is key to getting more personalized answers. For instance, letting ChatGPT know that “I’m researching this topic for myself” or “I’m planning to write a thesis paper about this” will help ChatGPT produce different responses for either situation.
- Your privacy and personalization boundaries: It’s definitely worth telling ChatGPT about everything you don’t want it to remember about you and use when trying to fulfill your requests. Reusable phrases, such as “Don’t use any sensitive information about me to personalize your answers” and “Ask any questions you may have before making assumptions about my circumstances,” help out immensely in this regard.
A reusable prompt that can make ChatGPT aware of who you are and what you want to accomplish
To avoid oversharing while simultaneously giving ChatGPT all the information it needs to build a personal profile about you, feel free to use this pre-generated prompt to get the process started:
I want to give you useful context about myself so you can provide more relevant, personalized answers without me having to repeat myself.
Ask me a series of concise questions to establish these seven areas:
1. My goals — What am I currently trying to accomplish, both short-term and long-term?
2. My expertise — What is my experience level in the subjects I’m likely to ask you about?
3. My preferences — How do I prefer information, explanations, recommendations, and feedback to be delivered?
4. My constraints — What limitations should you account for, such as time, budget, tools, deadlines, or resources?
5. My recurring interests — What subjects, hobbies, projects, or topics am I likely to return to?
6. My working context — What do I do, what am I working on, and who are my typical audiences or users?
7. My privacy and personalization boundaries — What information should you avoid asking for, remembering, inferring, or using to personalize your responses?
Interview me one area at a time rather than asking all seven at once. For each area, ask only the minimum number of questions needed to get genuinely useful information.
If I give you an answer that is vague or potentially useful to clarify, ask one focused follow-up question. Don't interrogate me or ask for information that isn't necessary.
At the end:
* Summarize what you learned.
* Separate useful personalization information from sensitive information I should not need to share.
* Identify any important gaps.
* Explain how this information will improve your future answers.
* Give me a concise "About Me" profile that I can save and reuse with another AI assistant.
Never pressure me to reveal passwords, financial credentials, precise location, private identifying information, or other highly sensitive information. When something isn't necessary for personalization, tell me I can leave it out.
Bottom line
Communicating with ChatGPT in the safest manner possible means providing it with key details about yourself that wouldn’t endanger you, anyone you know and any parts of your professional life. Giving a chatbot all the context it needs to help you conduct proper research, get the best product or vacation recommendations, learn new skills and get practical advice is worth doing.
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