📚 Glossary
Zero-shot
In one line: Asking the AI to do something without giving it any examples. The opposite of few-shot prompting.
Zero-shot means asking an AI to do a task without giving it any examples. Just the task description. Modern LLMs are surprisingly good at zero-shot tasks because they've seen so many similar tasks during training.
Example:
- Zero-shot: 'Translate this to French: I love coffee.'
- Few-shot: 'Translate to French. EN: Hello / FR: Bonjour. EN: Goodbye / FR: Au revoir. EN: I love coffee / FR:'
Few-shot is more reliable when the format is unusual. Zero-shot is fine for common tasks. The decision is part of prompt engineering.
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