mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Unleashing the potential of prompt engineering for large language models

arXiv 2310.14735 ↗First posted 23 Oct 2023cs.CL cs.AIcited by 72

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

This comprehensive review delves into the pivotal role of prompt engineering in unleashing the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), from its inception in the 1950s to the emergence of advanced neural networks and deep learning architectures, has made a breakthrough in LLMs, with models such as GPT-4o and Claude-3, and in Vision-Language Models (VLMs), with models such as CLIP and ALIGN. Prompt engineering is the process of structuring inputs, which has emerged as a crucial technique to maximize the utility and accuracy of these models. This paper explores both foundational and advanced methodologies of prompt engineering, including techniques such as self-consistency, chain-of-thought, and generated knowledge, which significantly enhance model performance. Additionally, it examines the prompt method of VLMs through innovative approaches such as Context Optimization (CoOp), Conditional Context Optimization (CoCoOp), and Multimodal Prompt Learning (MaPLe). Critical to this discussion is the aspect of AI security, particularly adversarial attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in prompt engineering. Strategies to mitigate these risks and enhance model robustness are thoroughly reviewed. The evaluation of prompt methods is also addressed through both subjective and objective metrics, ensuring a robust analysis of their efficacy. This review also reflects the essential role of prompt engineering in advancing AI capabilities, providing a structured framework for future research and application.

Key facts. Cited by 72 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 219 of its 302 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2023.

Builds on

219 of 302 references.

References · 219

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  3. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  4. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,132
  5. 2019Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformercited by 14,491
  6. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 12,865
  7. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  8. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 9,743
  9. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
  10. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  11. 2020Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understandingcited by 7,768
  12. 2014Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examplescited by 7,287
38 more
  1. 2017Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attackscited by 6,326
  2. 2019BART: Denoising Sequence-to-Sequence Pre-training for Natural Language Generation, Translation, and Comprehensioncited by 5,874
  3. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  4. 2019BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERTcited by 5,462
  5. 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,304
  6. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  7. 2018Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challengecited by 4,710
  8. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,323
  9. 2021Zero-Shot Text-to-Image Generationcited by 4,276
  10. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  11. 2021Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generationcited by 3,878
  12. 2021Scaling Up Visual and Vision-Language Representation Learning With Noisy Text Supervisioncited by 3,848
  13. 2017Deep reinforcement learning from human preferencescited by 3,846
  14. 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,686
  15. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,598
  16. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  17. 2023Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Modelscited by 2,914
  18. 2019The Curious Case of Neural Text Degenerationcited by 2,881
  19. 2023Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4cited by 2,579
  20. 2020Learning to summarize from human feedbackcited by 2,562
  21. 2015VQA: Visual Question Answeringcited by 2,489
  22. 2015Character-level Convolutional Networks for Text Classificationcited by 2,293
  23. 2021Learning to Prompt for Vision-Language Modelscited by 2,269
  24. 2021Pre-train, Prompt, and Predict: A Systematic Survey of Prompting Methods in Natural Language Processingcited by 2,222
  25. 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
  26. 2022Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generationcited by 2,056
  27. 2022Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language modelscited by 1,970
  28. 2018CommonsenseQA: A Question Answering Challenge Targeting Commonsense Knowledgecited by 1,793
  29. 2023Jailbroken: How Does LLM Safety Training Fail?cited by 1,565
  30. 2022Conditional Prompt Learning for Vision-Language Modelscited by 1,427
  31. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,422
  32. 2022Least-to-Most Prompting Enables Complex Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 1,397
  33. 2018FEVER: a large-scale dataset for Fact Extraction and VERificationcited by 1,362
  34. 2022Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Modelscited by 1,359
  35. 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,339
  36. 2020RealToxicityPrompts: Evaluating Neural Toxic Degeneration in Language Modelscited by 1,235
  37. 2023A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Modelscited by 1,227
  38. 2020Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answeringcited by 1,203

50 most cited of 219 All 219 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 14; 2025: 33; 2026: 25.

72 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agentscited by 294
  2. 2025OnePiece: Bringing Context Engineering and Reasoning to Industrial Cascade Ranking Systemcited by 18
  3. 2024SmileyLlama: Modifying Large Language Models for Directed Chemical Space Explorationcited by 14
  4. 2025MCIF: Multimodal Crosslingual Instruction-Following Benchmark from Scientific Talkscited by 14
  5. 2025Benchmarking Foundation Models for Zero-Shot Biometric Taskscited by 13
  6. 2024LangGPT: Rethinking Structured Reusable Prompt Design Framework for LLMs from the Programming Languagecited by 12
  7. 2024Motion meets Attention: Video Motion Promptscited by 12
  8. 2025Metamorphic Testing of Large Language Models for Natural Language Processingcited by 12
  9. 2024Beyond the Comfort Zone: Emerging Solutions to Overcome Challenges in Integrating LLMs into Software Productscited by 11
  10. 2025Promptomatix: An Automatic Prompt Optimization Framework for Large Language Modelscited by 11
  11. 2024NTSEBENCH: Cognitive Reasoning Benchmark for Vision Language Modelscited by 9
  12. 2025Failure Modes in LLM Systems: A System-Level Taxonomy for Reliable AI Applicationscited by 9
38 more
  1. 2024RoBERTa-BiLSTM: A Context-Aware Hybrid Model for Sentiment Analysiscited by 7
  2. 2026Computational Hermeneutics: Evaluating generative AI as a cultural technologycited by 7
  3. 2025Large Language Models and Evolutionary Computation: A Critical Review of Bidirectional Interaction, Automated Algorithm Design, and Co-Adaptive Systemscited by 6
  4. 2024Impact of Decentralized Learning on Player Utilities in Stackelberg Gamescited by 5
  5. 2025Improved IR-based Bug Localization with Intelligent Relevance Feedbackcited by 5
  6. 2025Multilingual Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: A Survey Across NLP Taskscited by 5
  7. 2025LLM-Agents Driven Automated Simulation Testing and Analysis of small Uncrewed Aerial Systemscited by 4
  8. 2025RAG-Pull: Turning Retrieval into a Code-Injection Channel via Invisible Unicode Perturbationscited by 4
  9. 2024A Course Intelligence Platform for Higher Education: Lessons from AI-Assisted Course Evaluationcited by 3
  10. 2025Trace-of-Thought Prompting: Investigating Prompt-Based Knowledge Distillation Through Question Decompositioncited by 3
  11. 2025Telco-oRAG: Optimizing Retrieval-augmented Generation for Telecom Queries via Hybrid Retrieval and Neural Routingcited by 3
  12. 2025Textual interpretation of transient image classifications from large language modelscited by 3
  13. 2026VIP-COP: Context Optimization for Tabular Foundation Modelscited by 3
  14. 2024OnlySportsLM: Optimizing Sports-Domain Language Models with SOTA Performance under Billion Parameterscited by 2
  15. 2024iToT: An Interactive System for Customized Tree-of-Thought Generationcited by 2
  16. 2025Prompt to Protection: A Comparative Study of Multimodal LLMs in Construction Hazard Recognitioncited by 2
  17. 2025Evaluating Large Language Models (LLMs) in Financial NLP: A Comparative Study on Financial Report Analysiscited by 2
  18. 2025Large Language Models Imitate Logical Reasoning, but at what Cost?cited by 2
  19. 2024Steamroller Problems: An Evaluation of LLM Reasoning Capability with Automated Theorem Prover Strategiescited by 1
  20. 2024FUSE-ing Language Models: Zero-Shot Adapter Discovery for Prompt Optimization Across Tokenizerscited by 1
  21. 2024Beyond Keywords: A Context-based Hybrid Approach to Mining Ethical Concern-related App Reviewscited by 1
  22. 2024System Test Case Design from Requirements Specifications: Insights and Challenges of Using ChatGPTcited by 1
  23. 2025Event Segmentation Applications in Large Language Model Enabled Automated Recall Assessmentscited by 1
  24. 2025Show or Tell? A Benchmark To Evaluate Visual and Textual Prompts in Semantic Segmentationcited by 1
  25. 2025One Patient, Many Contexts: Scaling Medical AI with Contextual Intelligencecited by 1
  26. 2025Is It Time To Treat Prompts As Code? A Multi-Use Case Study For Prompt Optimization Using DSPycited by 1
  27. 2025Follow My Lead: Logical Fallacy Classification with Knowledge-Augmented LLMscited by 1
  28. 2025Decentralized Multi-Agent Goal Assignment for Path Planning using Large Language Modelscited by 1
  29. 2026Universal computation is intrinsic to language model decodingcited by 1
  30. 2026A Training-Free Guess What Vision Language Model from Snippets to Open-Vocabulary Object Detectioncited by 1
  31. 2026Prompt Engineering for Scale Development in Generative Psychometricscited by 1
  32. 2026Breaking Validity-Induced Boundaries to Expand Algorithm Search Space: A Two-Stage AST-Based Operator for LLM-Driven Automated Heuristic Evolutioncited by 1
  33. 2026An Agentic AI Framework with Large Language Models and Chain-of-Thought for UAV-Assisted Logistics Scheduling with Mobile Edge Computingcited by 1
  34. 2026PromptAudit: Auditing Prompt Sensitivity in LLM-Based Vulnerability Detectioncited by 1
  35. 2026The Powerless Noise: How Experimental Settings Shape the Reported Power of Noisecited by 1
  36. 2026How to Ask the AI: A User Perspective Survey for Large Language Model Promptingcited by 1
  37. 2025From Parameters to Prompts: Understanding and Mitigating the Factuality Gap between Fine-Tuned LLMscited by 0
  38. 2025Automatic Classification of User Requirements from Online Feedback -- A Replication Studycited by 0

50 most cited of 72 All 72 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering in Large Language Models: Techniques and Applications
  2. 2023A Systematic Survey of Prompt Engineering on Vision-Language Foundation Models
  3. 2024The Prompt Canvas: A Literature-Based Practitioner Guide for Creating Effective Prompts in Large Language Models
  4. 2025An Empirical Study on Prompt Compression for Large Language Models
  5. 2025Prompt Engineering Large Language Models' Forecasting Capabilities
  6. 2024Prompt Design and Engineering: Introduction and Advanced Methods
  7. 2025Modeling Variants of Prompts for Vision-Language Models
  8. 2025PromptBridge: Cross-Model Prompt Transfer for Large Language Models