Ethan Mollick: 'Keep prompts short' is bad advice, and minimizing token cost confuses inputs with outputs

emollick · x · 2026-09-26

Quoting a viral post on standardizing AI usage, Ethan Mollick argues it confuses inputs with outputs: the goal is getting tasks done efficiently, not optimizing input-side metrics alone — the same trap as companies fixating solely on minimizing token cost. He also calls "keep prompts short" bad advice for getting good AI outputs.

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