How to use AI to manage the holiday season
Prompt structure is important to yielding the best results, UC professor tells WLWT
While the holidays can be overwhelming for many people, artificial intelligence could help reduce stress, WLWT reported.
Jeffrey Shaffer, director of the Applied AI Lab in the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business
AI can help create a meal prep schedule or find substitutes for ingredients. It can suggest gifts or compare prices across retailers. It also could help create a schedule of local festivities.
Jeffrey Shaffer, director of the Applied AI Lab in the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business, said a key to getting good results from an AI query is to be specific.
“You really want to think about how you structure your prompt when you ask a question,” said Shaffer, the Kirk and Jacki Perry Professor of Analytics and an assistant professor-educator in Lindner’s department of operations, business analytics, and information systems. “The things that you want to do in your prompt are give it enough specifics for the task that you want to do. Sometimes, you might even want to give it an example of what you want it to do.”
Featured image at top: A person slices a pie. Photo/Element5 Digital via Unsplash
Innovation Lives Here
The University of Cincinnati is leading public urban universities into a new era of innovation and impact. Our faculty, staff and students are saving lives, changing outcomes and bending the future in our city's direction. Next Lives Here.
Related Stories
Lindner graduate students shine in international simulation competition
November 10, 2025
Five master’s of information systems (MS IS) students took home fifth place out of 23 universities at the International ERPsim Competition hosted by HEC Montreal during the recent spring semester. The competition tests students’ knowledge of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and their ability to adapt to challenging business problems.
Sugar overload killing hearts
November 10, 2025
Two in five people will be told they have diabetes during their lifetime. And people who have diabetes are twice as likely to develop heart disease. One of the deadliest dangers? Diabetic cardiomyopathy. But groundbreaking University of Cincinnati research hopes to stop and even reverse the damage before it’s too late.
Is going nuclear the solution to Ohio’s energy costs?
November 10, 2025
The Ohio Capital Journal recently reported that as energy prices continue to climb, economists are weighing the benefits of going nuclear to curb costs. The publication dove into a Scioto Analysis survey of 18 economists to weigh the pros and cons of nuclear energy. One economist featured was Iryna Topolyan, PhD, professor of economics at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business.