'The prompt myth is a technical myth at the heart of the LLM boom. It was a simple but brilliant design stroke: rather than a window where people paste text and allow the LLM to extend it, ChatGPT framed it as a chat window. We’re used to chat boxes, a window that waits for our messages and gets a (previously human) response in return. In truth, users provide words that dictate what we get back. With shadow prompting, a phenomenon I wrote about in Tech Policy Press last year, our words are altered before reaching the model. The prompt window suggests more control over these systems than we have.'
https://www.techpolicy.press/challenging-the-myths-of-generative-ai/