Prompt Ensembles / Voting

Prompt ensembles use multiple prompts for the same task and aggregate the responses, often selecting the most common or highest-quality answer.

What is a Prompt Ensemble?

A prompt ensemble involves running several different prompts (or the same prompt with different phrasings) and then aggregating the responses. This can increase reliability, reduce bias, and help surface the best possible answer.

Key Characteristics

• Parallel Prompts: Multiple prompts are run for the same task.
• Aggregation: Responses are combined, compared, or voted on.
• Quality Control: Helps filter out outliers or hallucinations.

When to Use

• For critical tasks where accuracy is important.
• When responses may vary due to ambiguity or randomness.
• For research, benchmarking, or consensus-building.

Example Prompts

• "Ask three different ways: 'Summarize this article.' Choose the most consistent answer."
• "Generate five possible solutions and select the one that appears most frequently."

Best Practices

• Use diverse but relevant prompt variations.
• Define clear criteria for selecting the best response.
• Combine with self-consistency or chain-of-thought for best results.

Strengths and Limitations

Strengths:

• Increases reliability and robustness.
• Reduces the impact of random errors or biases.
• Surfaces consensus or high-quality answers.

Limitations:

• Requires more computation and resources.
• Aggregation logic must be carefully designed.
• May not resolve ambiguity if all responses differ.