What You See Is Not What You Get

Every lab in this workshop has been refined to be as "repeatable" as possible. It's one of the things we focused on at Microsoft: we need to figure out how to get the same results back every time. I was creating content for the Microsoft AI Tour at the time, which is a conference that happens around the world at multiple stops. Same content, different speaker at each stop.

I had to make something that was 1) as repeatable as possible and 2) easy to work with when things went sideways.

I've done the same for the labs in this workshop. That said, there's no way to guarantee the results will be the same. In fact, the only thing I can guarantee is that they won't be.

The Fun Is In The Chaos

It's OK if the results are different as this gives you the chance to explore, refine, tweak and see what's possible. This is the essence of working with AI: you keep asking until you get something that works for you, and also something that may surprise and delight you.

Every time I work with AI in the Real World, it provides something I didn't think of. Validation using a validation library like Zod (a JavaScript validation library that's very useful) or error handling that I forgot to put in.

I was creating a Stripe webhook receiver once and had Copilot's ghost text remind me to read in the requests raw body instead of expecting JSON. I've run into this problem before and it took me about an hour to debug it. More than once, too! Copilot, however, caught the problem for me.

All of this to say: don't be frustrated when your results are different. Use it as a point of discussion, perhaps. If you're in a workshop, ask the instructor to run the same prompt twice, even three times, and see how the results differ.

If it's a simple prompt with a lot context given, it might not differ at all. Prompts that can be parsed and interpreted in multiple ways, however, are wide open.

There's value in understanding that.

I hope you enjoy the workshop and approach it with an open mind. AI is a tool that you control, at least it should be, and if used appropriately can bring much joy to your day, and your job.