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This is a cool experiment, but at least in my company I’m not sure how useful it would be. There are some non-developer users who can run queries on a read-onl

by rgmerk 3y ago

This is a cool experiment, but at least in my company I’m not sure how useful it would be. There are some non-developer users who can run queries on a read-only copy of the database. However, for anything complicated they usually have to ask the developers whether the query they have written actually matches the English description of what they want. Sometimes it does, but often there’s some nuances that their query doesn’t capture. Most of the expense of getting this data isn’t writing the query, therefore, it’s validating it. If you need the help of a tool like this to write your query, how are you possibly going to know whether the results are what you want without taking the generated query to an expert?

toyg 3y ago
Sadly, they won't care - they'll trust the tools, like they've blindly done for decades. "Computer says no", and all that. We're in for a scary wild ride.
infecto 3y ago
I was wondering the same thing with these kind of products. Garbage in - garbage out. Same concern I have with all the companies using LLM for searching company documents. Most of the data I have seen at the corporate level does indeed have nuance to it and is often not as clear as just the named column. Usually not much of any documentation and that is always a tough problem to solve. Imo it’s about how to maintain knowledge bases properly, it’s a tough but to crack.
catchnear4321 3y ago
a fool with a tool is cheaper than an expert. especially if expertise is needed to adequately estimate cost. that’s the gamble all of these “natural language” tools are making. sell to people that aren’t experts, attempt to deflect criticism from those that are. what’s a $20k subscription compared to a $200k person? what comes next depends on the company. some will invest the money in the product to make it more useful. others will search for more fools. most importantly, nobody wants to be left behind. there’s a lot of products that need more time in the oven, but that’s never stopped a good salesperson.

by rgmerk 3y ago

toyg 3y ago

Sadly, they won't care - they'll trust the tools, like they've blindly done for decades. "Computer says no", and all that. We're in for a scary wild ride.

infecto 3y ago

I was wondering the same thing with these kind of products. Garbage in - garbage out. Same concern I have with all the companies using LLM for searching company documents. Most of the data I have seen at the corporate level does indeed have nuance to it and is often not as clear as just the named column. Usually not much of any documentation and that is always a tough problem to solve. Imo it’s about how to maintain knowledge bases properly, it’s a tough but to crack.

catchnear4321 3y ago

a fool with a tool is cheaper than an expert. especially if expertise is needed to adequately estimate cost. that’s the gamble all of these “natural language” tools are making. sell to people that aren’t experts, attempt to deflect criticism from those that are. what’s a $20k subscription compared to a $200k person? what comes next depends on the company. some will invest the money in the product to make it more useful. others will search for more fools. most importantly, nobody wants to be left behind. there’s a lot of products that need more time in the oven, but that’s never stopped a good salesperson.