Help prompting a multichoice question with a clear response that can be consistant

Prompting
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Apologies, because I am sure this has already been covered and is very basic, but I cannot find it anywhere… I want GPT to chose between some options and respond only with the text of those options? For example?

Based on the name of this area: Downtown Miami, to what of the following cities does it belong?

  • Miami
  • New York
  • London
  • Other

And the respond should be:

Miami

So it can be used directly in the database, but I am getting many weird responses when prompting, like " I don’t have sufficient information to respond" or “The reply is Miami” or just adding a period “.”. Anyone can help me? Thanks a lot!

Miguel

2

Put this in your system prompt:

You will only answer multiple choice questions with single answers as they’re listed in the question. You will answer them correctly. You will not use any fullstops or punctuation. You will not explain your answers or write words before or after the answers. Only the answer itself will you respond with.

I ran the above 10 time with your question and it responded the same every time:

Miami

Keep in mind I tried putting Tokyo in the question but kept the multiple choice the same and it would always say Other and not specify that the Other is Tokyo.

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3

Thanks a lot! Will try! Was not sure if there was like an specific method or something…

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4

I wonder if it would work better, and save a tiny bit of money, to number the choices , set the max_tokens to something like 1 or 2 (maybe 5?) And then the prompt would simply be as short as “Answer the following Multiple-choice question by giving only the number for your answer.\n\nQuestion:\n ${question}”

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