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

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He did say marketing, sales and PR but your point still stands.

I was referring to marketing, sales, and PR as activities moreso than the people who work in those fields. I can't speak for all stem people, of course, but I, personally, have a strong aversion to those activities.

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

#242
I think SQL can also benefit from some of the progress around making things that "feel like" ML easier. For instance, dplyr is a refreshing change to the way you write operations that manipulate data in a table/column structure, even though it uses mostly the same verbs and language constructs as SQL.

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

#244
People written SQL scripts that check for scenarios, and even potentially action / repair them is a form of intelligence. It's not artificial, either.

Thinking back to successful ERP implementations, little was more useful during go-live or an ongoing basis than a script that ran every hour/day/week/month to look for a condition and report it.

In one case, over a 3 year period where the organization grew from 0 to 60 million per year, every data issue was logged as a ticket, investigated, where needed, a Sql script written to monitor other occurrences, and ultimately, if there was a need to action, it would be forwarded to the right destination with a link to instructions on how to resolve or investigate if a decision could not be programmatically made.

The power of this was users received direct and immediate feedback anytime they wanted if their work was good and compliant with the system and process.

How did the list of scripts to build get made? Every time the system behaved correctly or incorrectly, and needed attention, whether due to data being incomplete, mis-entered, or correct and ready for the next step, the technology was busy working for the users.

Scripts reduced concerns that issues were being missed. Once something had happened and it was important enough, a custom insight could be built. It helped build a data driven culture instead of hoping the computer picked the right thing.

Sql scripts could one day feed into or fit with AI/ML. I don't see that day here in the short term.

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

#245

My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this. I indicated that it was actually quite ef…

Just rename your company BeeLine Reader Blockchain and you'll be fine.

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

#246
ML is best suited for situations where there is no practical solution using typical statistics techniques and where marginal improvements in accuracy lead to significant boosts in revenue or some other useful metric. It turns out there aren't that many of those problems unless you're operating on truly enormous scales.

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

#247
post #239

My startup was approached by a corporate VC that wanted to make a strategic investment. Based on the attendee list from our meeting, which included very high up folks from the company, I felt good going in. They expressed interest in our technology that makes reading on screen easier [1], but they were surprised to learn that we didn't use machine learning to accomplish this. I indicated that it was actually quite ef…

So, I went to the page, clicked the button for the Firefox extension, and was greeted with this page: https://s.mort.coffee/d/img/scr-4494758.png You should probably link to the add-on page ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beelinereader... ) instead of directly to the .xpi file. I would never accept to install a plug-in from a random link even if it hadn't been for the dialog's scary language.

Thanks for the feedback. We tried to make it as easy as possible, but I can see that it comes across as more legit if the install comes from the Firefox Store, which requires vetting.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...minus the ones which are obviously a toaster, while the AI insists they're you and your wife sitting in a boat ;) Now what?

Well, yes, it's not perfect yet, but then I'm pretty sure SQL Queries won't fare any better here ;). Google photos does quite a decent job for me in many cases.

Well, Google receives free Mechanical Turk style image identification through their CAPTCHA (or whatever it's called nowadays).

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate the feedback. We recently redesigned the website to offer silos, and one of the goals was to make the landing page not offer too many specifics that would make some audiences bounce. But perhaps your suggestion is just what we need to do. Thanks for taking the time to share! One lesson learned: I should have linked to the /individual page instead of the generic landing page in my comment. Updating link now…

I bounced as soon as I couldn’t find pricing information.

Good point — this is something we need to address. Our most popular products (browser plugin and iOS app) both have free trials so that people can see how much they like to read with BeeLine. The iOS app actually has very significant free functionality, so if you just want to use it as a reading list (like Pocket/Instapaper) you can do so for free via the Share Extension, which populates an offline reading list.

Things get more complicated, as the browser plugins are subscription ($2/mo or $22/yr) and the iOS app is one-time IAPs (mostly a few bucks, but more for the Kindle feature). I'm not sure how to succinctly communicate this, but you and other commenters make clear that we need to have some info here.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts!

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

#250
post #29

I almost took a "big data" data scientist job about a year ago with a local company. After talking to a number of their engineers, it became quite clear to me that instead of a data scientist, they just badly needed a DBA / someone with ownership and a complete vision of the data structure. They had no foreign keys, poorly 'designed' indexes, and tons of redundant tables with no rhyme or reason to them. They'd organi…

I'll bet they found they got 10 times more applicants for a data scientist role as opposed to a dba/sql/data engineer.

But what's to point? You will get a lot of applicants from non-cs backgrounds. Not only will they be unprepared for the job but also most likely very unhappy with their tasks.
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