GPT-3 cannot mix two actions into one prompt (summarisation and tense changing)

Question

(Just a heads up, this feels like a weird question to ask since there's not really any code involved, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask)

I am trying to summarise a journal entry and convert it into second person past tense (i.e. "I went to the shop" -> "You went to the shop").

When I give the following prompt to GPT-3 (Da Vinci, all other params normal), it gives me a summary as expected:

Summarise this text:

We took to the streets of London on the London hire bikes aka Boris Bikes / BoJo Bikes; previously Barclays Bikes and now Santander Bikes – bloomin heck this is complicated.  I knew the direction where I wanted to get to and knew how to get there except I didn’t really.

We started our journey at one of bike hire station in St John’s Wood and continued around Regents Park (the wrong way) Simon got us to one of the gateways to the path along the Regents Canal.  Sometimes they can be quite difficult to find; this was one of those times. This particular one was located at the back of a housing estate; only that Simon knew where it was there was no way I would have found it.

Off down the canal we went. Sunday afternoons are a busy time along the canal with local people mixed in with tourists from all over the world; so cycling along a narrow path is not easy as everyone walks on different sides of the path (according to where they come from)! We got towards Camden Market and the path got very busy, to the point that I almost went into the canal but with a wibble and a wobble I managed to stay in.  At that point the decision was easily made to get off that bike and walk it. The Santander App showed us where the nearest parking station was and that there was space available to park up.

Coffee time! Forget the major chains, we found a small local place called T & G for some cups of coffee and a sarnie before we went out to find out next bike to get us to Granary Square in Kings Cross for our next stop. From the canal path there is a grassed set of steps going up to the Square but first we parked up the bikes on the other side of the canal. So many places to choose from to hang out, for drinks and for food or trains to Paris, Lille, Edinburgh or Manchester to start off with.

All in all, we went out and achieved what we intended to – a cycle along the canal with a couple of stops along the way for some food and drinks.  What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

// GPT-3's answer:

The author takes a Boris Bike (a bike available for rent in London) and cycles along the Regents Canal. They note that the path is busy on a Sunday afternoon, but manage to find a parking spot for their bike before exploring the area around Granary Square in Kings Cross.

That is a very good summary.

Now, I can convert the summary to second person POV like so:

Convert the following to past tense second person:

The author takes a Boris Bike (a bike available for rent in London) and cycles along the Regents Canal. They note that the path is busy on a Sunday afternoon, but manage to find a parking spot for their bike before exploring the area around Granary Square in Kings Cross.

// GPT-3's answer:

You took a Boris Bike and cycled along the Regents Canal. You noted that the path was busy on a Sunday afternoon, but managed to find a parking spot for your bike before exploring the area around Granary Square in Kings Cross.

Again, excellent! But if I combine the prompts like so:

Summarise the following and convert the result to past tense second person:

It doesn't work well at all - in fact it just seems to ignore the summarisation part of the prompt, i.e. it just converts the whole passage to second person past tense. How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Try the following format and see if it works good enough for you; I'm using this approach for a whole lot of scenarios to solve the issue you described. Use zero-temperature (unless you want to risk variations).

Our prompt:

Story Text: "We took to the streets of London on the London hire bikes aka Boris Bikes / BoJo Bikes; previously Barclays Bikes and now Santander Bikes – bloomin heck this is complicated.  I knew the direction where I wanted to get to and knew how to get there except I didn’t really.

We started our journey at one of bike hire station in St John’s Wood and continued around Regents Park (the wrong way) Simon got us to one of the gateways to the path along the Regents Canal.  Sometimes they can be quite difficult to find; this was one of those times. This particular one was located at the back of a housing estate; only that Simon knew where it was there was no way I would have found it.

Story Text: "We took to the streets of London on the London hire bikes aka Boris Bikes / BoJo Bikes; previously Barclays Bikes and now Santander Bikes – bloomin heck this is complicated.  I knew the direction where I wanted to get to and knew how to get there except I didn’t really.

We started our journey at one of bike hire station in St John’s Wood and continued around Regents Park (the wrong way) Simon got us to one of the gateways to the path along the Regents Canal.  Sometimes they can be quite difficult to find; this was one of those times. This particular one was located at the back of a housing estate; only that Simon knew where it was there was no way I would have found it.

Off down the canal we went. Sunday afternoons are a busy time along the canal with local people mixed in with tourists from all over the world; so cycling along a narrow path is not easy as everyone walks on different sides of the path (according to where they come from)! We got towards Camden Market and the path got very busy, to the point that I almost went into the canal but with a wibble and a wobble I managed to stay in.  At that point the decision was easily made to get off that bike and walk it. The Santander App showed us where the nearest parking station was and that there was space available to park up.

Coffee time! Forget the major chains, we found a small local place called T & G for some cups of coffee and a sarnie before we went out to find out next bike to get us to Granary Square in Kings Cross for our next stop. From the canal path there is a grassed set of steps going up to the Square but first we parked up the bikes on the other side of the canal. So many places to choose from to hang out, for drinks and for food or trains to Paris, Lille, Edinburgh or Manchester to start off with."

Following is the Summary of the Story Text (1) and Second Person Past Tense of that Summary (2): 
1) 

So, by using "Following is the Summary of the Story Text (1) and Second Person Past Tense of that Summary (2): 1) " we're biasing GPT-3 in a simple and syntactically strongly outlined way, and this bias is the very last thing in the prompt; we also help it by already providing the "1) " (but leaving its content empty).

GPT-3's zero-temperature result (model text-davinci-002):

 We took the London hire bikes for a ride and ended up at a coffee shop near Camden Market.
2) You took the London hire bikes for a ride and ended up at a coffee shop near Camden Market.

I suggest you also add "3)" as stop sequence in case GPT-3 adds too much. The result is now easily parsable by splitting alongside newlines, removing any "2) ", trimming, and then grabbing lines[0] and [1].