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What are good AI prompts? Thank you.

jvh

Freshman Member
Joined
Oct 26, 2015
Professional Status
Certified General Appraiser
State
North Carolina
What are good AI prompts? Thank you.
 
?? Ask your favorite AI to calculate your federal income tax (you have to tell them the amounts for the various income and expense lines).
 
Appraisers thinking AI can do everything for them.
Sorry, AI can't help appraisers think.
 
It definitely can't do everything, but it can do some things very well. I've been working with AI, both Claude and ChatGPT, and ArcGIS Pro. There is so much free shapefile data out there that you can combine MLS, assessor data, state Department of Transportation data, and other types of data, using AI to perform some very sophisticated analysis very easily. It's like any new technology, it's all how you use it.
 
I'm sorry that I don't have any specific appraisal related prompts to give you since mine are specifically tailored to my work process and what I am trying to accomplish. My advice is to understand the basics on how LLMs work. They are not magic so they can be led astray in their reasoning easily. That's when they hallucinate. Many models don't remember things to keep in context unless you specifically tell them to. Many AI models will get "dumber" if you use them too much. This is often how the AI companies "throttle" usage. If you want to dive deep, get a subscription to one or more of the AI services. I have paid subscriptions to both ChatGPT and Claude but I also have several LLMs running locally on my machine for privacy reasons. The higher tiered subscriptions will allow you to keep your data private, to a point, and that can keep you from violating USPAP or worse. Don't be like so many lawyers and rely on AI to supposedly research and pull data for you, and spit out the results in a nice format, to only to find that some of the data and citations were bogus. I first broke down my work flow into the steps I normally take to complete an appraisal. Break down everything into individual steps, no matter how small. See which steps are duplicated, or which steps can be automated. I use WinTotal for my residential work, so I can link a spreadsheet to any field in the report. I use my local AI model to read my appraisal orders from the engagement letter, pull names, file numbers, or other information that is required in the report or for billing and put that into an Excel spreadsheet which I then paste into WinTotal. This eliminates a considerable amount of data entry. I do this for a lot of the report. For actual analysis work, I don't really let online AI models handle that. I did and continue to let AI models help me design spreadsheets that analyze just about anything. Because of AI models losing context so easily, I just let Excel do the math. Because I can see and review any formulas, I can understand and most importantly explain how I calculated something. All I do is then load data into the analysis spreadsheet I created, review the results, and decide what to use in the report. I use AI to pull and geocode addresses using ArcGIS shapefiles so that I can determine distances between the subject, comps or other locations. Even though I use ArcGIS, I can upload several shapefiles into Claude and ask it to find the nearest grocery store, or nearest Target or Walmart. For my mass appraisal work, I can ask it to find me "all commercially zoned parcels, closest to a lighted intersection, with at least 5,000 vehicles per day traffic." It's great for stuff like this. Keep your questions brief but direct, with little or no ambiguity. You can tell AI agents to go to certain sites and look up data for you, but unfortunately most of the sites we use tend to employ log in tests to keep data scrapers out. None of my AI agents can look up deeds or plat maps for me in the counties where I work because to log in they first make me "Select every picture with a bicycle in it." to determine if I'm human. As a side note, ArcGIS shapefiles are great because they typically contain a wealth of data about the parcel you are working with. Most gis map files of county GIS data will have an attribute table attached with the current tax data from the Assessor's Office for each parcel. You can have your AI agent pull that out, calculate latitude and longitude of each parcel, and put it all into a spreadsheet. This is how AI will change what we do as appraisers. I hope this helped.
 
The best AI prompt is "No Thanks!" Best for what?
 
I'm sorry that I don't have any specific appraisal related prompts to give you since mine are specifically tailored to my work process and what I am trying to accomplish. My advice is to understand the basics on how LLMs work. They are not magic so they can be led astray in their reasoning easily. That's when they hallucinate. Many models don't remember things to keep in context unless you specifically tell them to. Many AI models will get "dumber" if you use them too much. This is often how the AI companies "throttle" usage. If you want to dive deep, get a subscription to one or more of the AI services. I have paid subscriptions to both ChatGPT and Claude but I also have several LLMs running locally on my machine for privacy reasons. The higher tiered subscriptions will allow you to keep your data private, to a point, and that can keep you from violating USPAP or worse. Don't be like so many lawyers and rely on AI to supposedly research and pull data for you, and spit out the results in a nice format, to only to find that some of the data and citations were bogus. I first broke down my work flow into the steps I normally take to complete an appraisal. Break down everything into individual steps, no matter how small. See which steps are duplicated, or which steps can be automated. I use WinTotal for my residential work, so I can link a spreadsheet to any field in the report. I use my local AI model to read my appraisal orders from the engagement letter, pull names, file numbers, or other information that is required in the report or for billing and put that into an Excel spreadsheet which I then paste into WinTotal. This eliminates a considerable amount of data entry. I do this for a lot of the report. For actual analysis work, I don't really let online AI models handle that. I did and continue to let AI models help me design spreadsheets that analyze just about anything. Because of AI models losing context so easily, I just let Excel do the math. Because I can see and review any formulas, I can understand and most importantly explain how I calculated something. All I do is then load data into the analysis spreadsheet I created, review the results, and decide what to use in the report. I use AI to pull and geocode addresses using ArcGIS shapefiles so that I can determine distances between the subject, comps or other locations. Even though I use ArcGIS, I can upload several shapefiles into Claude and ask it to find the nearest grocery store, or nearest Target or Walmart. For my mass appraisal work, I can ask it to find me "all commercially zoned parcels, closest to a lighted intersection, with at least 5,000 vehicles per day traffic." It's great for stuff like this. Keep your questions brief but direct, with little or no ambiguity. You can tell AI agents to go to certain sites and look up data for you, but unfortunately most of the sites we use tend to employ log in tests to keep data scrapers out. None of my AI agents can look up deeds or plat maps for me in the counties where I work because to log in they first make me "Select every picture with a bicycle in it." to determine if I'm human. As a side note, ArcGIS shapefiles are great because they typically contain a wealth of data about the parcel you are working with. Most gis map files of county GIS data will have an attribute table attached with the current tax data from the Assessor's Office for each parcel. You can have your AI agent pull that out, calculate latitude and longitude of each parcel, and put it all into a spreadsheet. This is how AI will change what we do as appraisers. I hope this helped.

You need to post more bro you nailed everything. There isn't a single thing in your post I have found to be different than my own experience. As far as the OP the best way to find new prompts is to ask the AI of your choice to write a prompt for you. Just tell it what you are trying to accomplish and to come up with a prompt that you can use. After a while of use you can then tailor the generated prompt and further customize it so you get exactly what you are looking for.

One of the most used prompts I have for AI I use is tell me how many proposed units are in this new construction condo project by zzz builder in zzz subdivision in zzz city
 
You need to post more bro you nailed everything. There isn't a single thing in your post I have found to be different than my own experience. As far as the OP the best way to find new prompts is to ask the AI of your choice to write a prompt for you. Just tell it what you are trying to accomplish and to come up with a prompt that you can use. After a while of use you can then tailor the generated prompt and further customize it so you get exactly what you are looking for.

One of the most used prompts I have for AI I use is tell me how many proposed units are in this new construction condo project by zzz builder in zzz subdivision in zzz city
Thanks for wanting to see me post more. I didn't realize that it had been a few years since I had posted anything. Time gets away from me sometimes.
 
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