Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

threadreaderapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 331 posts

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#201

Post by freehunter »

vidarh wrote: post #176
ak39 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nothing to do with the website/product in question, but could you explain a bit more why you would "bounce" (assuming bounce means you would lose interest) if you didn't immediately see pricing information?

For me, I almost always bounce if I don't immediately see pricing information as it is an important signal with respect to whether or not this is something that's targeted towards me and/or whether or not they think I'll get sticker shock if they show it to me right away. In either case, the lack of readily available pricing makes me negatively inclined to spend more time looking into a product where I don't know if…

I agree. There have been a lot of times I’ve been interested in something that seems to be exactly what I’m looking for but when I manage to find pricing information it’s starting at $990/mo. And now I’ve wasted all that time on a product very obviously not designed to help me remember to pick up bread at the store.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#202

Post by freehunter »

halflings wrote: post #116
guy98238710 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need AI to find values for free parameters. Unless you consider all of statistics to be a subfield of AI.

Why use the term "AI" when the GP specifically used the less ambiguous Machine Learning? Machine Learning = statistics + linear algebra + computer science, mostly. Naive Bayes and Graphical Models are pure statistics, but they are mostly used for toy problems. Machine Learning scales these approaches to high dimensionality problems, and tasks where data is abundant.

Funny, I would consider many ML usages to be toy problems. Coming up with funny nonsensical Shakespeare plays or generating random Pantone colors or Pokémon names isn’t something you hear from Bayesian systems. That’s the domain of ML. Recommending related products is again simple statistical analysis. And I can generate a prediction based on past performance real easy with some SQL and a couple of “if” statements.

Just because Bayesian isn’t over-hyped doesn’t mean it doesn’t solve real problems. Not everything can be solved with ML, unless the problem is getting more investor money.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#203

Post by giantsloth »

adriand wrote: post #170
JepZ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just how larger corporations work. They probably decided they wanted to be part of that future market about AI and therefore want to invest in AI/ML startups. Someone sold your company internally as being a nice fit for the AI portfolio, but when you answered the question about ML with "No" the door was shut. From someone who makes large trade deals as his daily business, I learned "Never say 'No'" (during a…

You should never mislead a potential investor. Why would you want an investor who is misaligned with your core technology/strategic direction?

This is a quaint sentiment, but marketing, sales, PR is all about misleading and creating unnecessary want. This is a major tenant of running a business and living under capitalism. There is also a moral argument for doing what you need to do in order to survive the difficulties of the market in order to survive it and change it into something more akin to your honest attitude about it.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#204

Post by leblancfg »

nkozyra wrote: post #30
zitterbewegung wrote: post #3

Companies have a large problem of having their data tucked away or inaccessible to the stakeholders. When people talk about AI / ML what they actually need is their data cleaned to the point where they can communicate to their stakeholders. Also, all of the companies who sell AI / ML as consultants are really good already at cleaning data. When companies actually hire data scientists what they typically do is clean d…

100%. What this all boils down to in 2018 is data. Data acquisition, data cleansing, data filing, etc. But what else is there, now? You're going to create a new, novel ANN network? Cool, can't wait to peruse your paper. Maybe someday it's considered groundbreaking. Right now it's not solving immediate problems. Immediate problems were solved with 1970s ideas + 2018's infrastructure.

A word against hasty generalisation - just because you don't interact with it on a daily basis doesn't mean it isn't being worked on elsewhere.

There is an increasing number of ML-first companies out there. They are solving problems like object detection, portfolio strategy optimization, medical diagnosis, etc. Things that are 100% not possible to do with just SQL and Bash, and much less expensive than to have humans run those tasks. In those fields, these companies will outperform their competition on average.

I think it's smart for investors to look for in knowledge and talent in the companies they look into. If there's AI/ML talent in the team, their value for acquisition (acqui-hire) is higher.

If you want to solve problems for your existing company, you certainly don't need AI/ML. You can tackle many, many low-hanging fruits with just SQL and Bash.

If you want to build the kind of company that will be around in 30 years, you need to have an ML-first mindset, and you probably need to start now.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#205

Post by reacharavindh »

ashelmire wrote: post #198
ju-st wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a simple system would recommend many items that are frequently bought by everyone (like bread, toilet paper, batteries). You would have to weight the items in some fancy way to get useful recommendations... And I have just described the introducing slides of a applied machine learning university lecture.

This article and thread gives the impression that it’s dominated by people who don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of ML. If they think SQL is a replacement for ML, I’m really not sure what they’re doing in this field. ML is for making sense of data in a large number of ways beyond “hey let’s query a database for some trivial information”.

True. I don't think the OP or I deny that. The premise is that some practitioners use ML as an overkill for things that are simple enough to be solved by SQL.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#206

Post by 1123581321 »

mygo wrote: post #78
1123581321 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies with budgets are willing to think in terms of quarters or years. You’ve laid out the plan for them and they’ve agreed to it. The money is allocated in an annual budget or obtained with a purchase order, so it’s not going to be suddenly reallocated unless there’s a big problem. Experienced clients wouldn’t move to another agency to do analytics “faster” because they would know they’d just have to ramp up the…

well then in that case in many regards working with companies that have quarterly / annual budgets is easier than working with clients who do not. But it appears to be harder to make the sale if you don’t already have a legendary track record that warrants their one-year-commitment.

No, analytics management is something many companies feel they need to pay for since the marketing team wants to show good numbers, they need to justify ad spending, web development etc. You do need a good relationship with a client to sell more than piecemeal work, but you don’t need to be “legendary” to get enough clients.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#207

Post by acdha »

treydey wrote: post #145
sixdimensional wrote: post #34

Well, we are in the peak of a wave of hype about AI/ML, maybe even just past that peak. Many fundamental technological advancements in the field of AI/ML have sort of coalesced together at the current time to form a strong feature set that can be more broadly applied by a wider audience, not just those hardcore computer scientists who invented the technology. I've been in the thick of this previously, facing a comple…

I disagree that this is the peak of AI/ML. Companies are desperately looking for PhDs in AI that can fulfill their business needs. I think we're about to see a lot more applications of AI/ML.

The original poster specified the peak of a hype wave. I think we are due for a bit of a collapse where the more fanciful claims fall apart but that seems healthier to me because it’d avoid distracting from the solid real applications.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#208

Post by epilogue »

The writer seems to describe very basic data mining in some cases, which in itself is a form of AI/ML, but then other examples have no relevance to needing to use AI/ML at all.

If their data is already clean enough for SQL queries to work reliably and they are familiar with the SQL syntax, why not look into things such as DMX in MSSQL to make predictions on what these customers are likely to want to buy. This solves the whole marketing breast pumps to a man who bought sneakers scenario, while it also providing more personalized recommendations.

If your current technique is to send an email about sneakers to recent sneaker purchasers, do you really thing they are in the market for another pair?

Sure, it might not make sense to implement a deep learning neural network just to send something like a semi-personal marketing email but their are so many varying levels of AI/ML that seem to get ignored in favor of the flavor of the month Tensorflow/IBM Watson/Whatever else. Quite frankly, the whole thing just comes across as a very closed minded rant from someone who isn't interested in exploring what new technologies are capable of.

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#209

Post by nicodds »

I think the writer is overgeneralizing his particular use case. Surely, the situation he represents doesn't need any AI/ML, but it is the result of a simple use case, with little variables and with an easy workflow.

Does the same pattern apply also in more complex scenarios?

Re: You probably don't need AI/ML. You can make do with well written SQL scripts

#210

Post by chongli »

giantsloth wrote: post #203
adriand wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should never mislead a potential investor. Why would you want an investor who is misaligned with your core technology/strategic direction?

This is a quaint sentiment, but marketing, sales, PR is all about misleading and creating unnecessary want. This is a major tenant of running a business and living under capitalism. There is also a moral argument for doing what you need to do in order to survive the difficulties of the market in order to survive it and change it into something more akin to your honest attitude about it.

I think you'll find that a lot of stem people tend to lean Kantian in their ethics. This implies that misleading people for any reason -- even "for their own good" -- is frowned upon.
Post reply on HN