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Editing

Make AI critique its own draft, then revise from the critique

Tools:
ChatGPT, Claude, Grok
Who it's for

Anyone who takes the first AI draft as final

What they report

No metric reported. Ethan Mollick (Wharton) argues the best way to use AI is interactively rather than hunting for a perfect prompt. In the comments of his guide, Conor Grennan shares a technique he credits to Mollick: after an answer, ask the AI to critique its own response, poke holes in it, then improve it based on that critique.

Example

Mollick's broader tip: give context and constraints, for example 'provide it a few paragraphs you have written and say using the style in the paragraphs below, can you write ___.'

from source

How to do it

  1. Get a first draft with context and a few paragraphs of your writing.
  2. Ask for a harsh critique against the goal and audience.
  3. Ask it to rewrite based only on the critique.
  4. Repeat once. More rounds usually flatten the voice.
  5. Do the final edit yourself.

The prompt

Fill in the [brackets]
Copy prompt

Here is a draft for [audience] whose goal is [goal]: [paste draft] Step 1: Critique it as a tough editor. List the 5 biggest weaknesses: where it's vague, where it's boring, where a reader would stop, what's missing, and any claim that isn't supported. Quote the lines. Step 2: Poke holes in your own critique. Which of your points are wrong or would make the piece worse? Step 3: Rewrite the draft fixing only the points that survived Step 2. Keep my voice and length. Show the rewrite and a short list of what changed.

Prompt:
Legacy Builder version, based on the technique in the source
Source:
Ethan Mollick, 'A guide to prompting AI (for what it is worth)' (One Useful Thing), incl. comment by Conor Grennan
Read the original ↗
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