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Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

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Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#301

Post by ethbr0 »

contravariant wrote: post #198
ethbr0 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer I'm in the business, the more I feel like my value as a software developer is identifying and asking clarifying questions.

I think I saw a comic years ago detailing a discussion that went something like this: A: Eventually we won't need programmers people will just tell the computer what they need and it will generate the code for them. B: True, there's actually already an industry term for a specification that's detailed enough to generate a working program from. A: Oh, what is it called? B: Code.

People don't realize how imprecise specs can be until they have this conversation for the first time.

"Okay, I understand what to do when {thing} happens. What do you want done when {not thing} happens?"

"Oh, umm..."

"{Not thing} can happen, right?"

"Oh yeah, all the time."

"So was the plan when it does?"

"I'm not sure..."

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#302

Post by tremon »

jeremyjh wrote: post #73
rezonant wrote: post #65

While this is very cool, SQL was designed to be used by business people. We need to go back to that model, where we train the business people who need these analytics how to use SQL to uncover the result. That along with a rigorous policy for including the queries that produced the result so the query logic can be checked would go a long way to actually taking advantage of the data we're collecting as businesses.

Sorry friend, but this is a bit out of touch. Maybe that was the original design intent of SQL, but understanding the application's data model is beyond a lot of sql analysts, much less their business partners.

But you don't want to do reporting on an application's data model, that doesn't scale: as soon as you have a medium-sized business, the data will not be confined to a single application (unless that application is named SAP). Understanding the business data model is a requirement for SQL analysts anyway, and once you have the application data transformed to the business model, the business users will have no trouble understanding it.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#303

Post by logicallee »

beckon69 wrote: post #32
logicallee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it fails your "not even close to being a form of general intelligence" bar. For me it clearly unambiguously no-contest 100% definitely exhibits behaviors that qualify it as a limited form of general intelligence.

> limited form of general intelligence. this seems like a bit of a misnomer, no?

You're right. However, I use ChatGPT every day on tasks of a generic nature, including things I come up with on the spot. That doesn't mean it gets everything perfect every time, but it has no problem manipulating abstract concepts. It is a general form of intelligence able to deal with new things and arrangements, but sometimes gets it wrong. It is not limited to one specific type of input or domain. So, how do you propose I qualify that it is a general form of intelligence that still has limitations? I agree that "a limited form of general intelligence" does seem to contain a contradiction.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#304

Post by contravariant »

ivegotnoaccount wrote: post #291
contravariant wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I saw a comic years ago detailing a discussion that went something like this: A: Eventually we won't need programmers people will just tell the computer what they need and it will generate the code for them. B: True, there's actually already an industry term for a specification that's detailed enough to generate a working program from. A: Oh, what is it called? B: Code.

Yup. I think it was from Commitstrip. edit: found it. https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensi... ?

Yeah that's the one.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#305

Post by pklee »

williamcotton wrote: post #109
modriano wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it's unambiguously worse to produce wrong answers confidently than to return no answers, although I expect confidence men (also known as "con men") have a different opinion on this.

Hard code a preface of “My best guess is, and I could be wrong:”? Show both the SQL query and the results and politely request that the user double check the work? Show multiple generated responses from different seeds?

This is fantastic. This is what we do on our platform. + Copy and keep what worked and what did not so you can fine tune :)

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#306

Post by simonw »

andyreagan wrote: post #293
simonw wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is genuinely the cutting edge of how you do interesting things with language models like GPT-3 at the moment. Training these models with extra data turns out to be incredibly expensive and relatively ineffective. Instead, the most interesting research is all around tricks like this - figuring out ways to round-trip to the language model, then query other sources of data for the information that it needs, then se…

> Training these models with extra data turns out to be incredibly expensive and relatively ineffective. I can see that it's expensive, but have you tried it for effectiveness? BTW, your approach is very cool here.

I've only done two experiments with it myself - training a tagging model on my blog's content and using that to suggest tags for untagged entries - and I found the results very unimpressive fur both a cheaper and the most expensive model.

I've seen a few other people suggest that time tuning GPT is unlikely to give better results than just feeding the regular model a few examples in a regular prompt.

I've yet to see anyone talking about a GPT3 fine tuning project that went really for them. Maybe I haven't looked in the right places.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#307

Post by sumitkumar »

Hedepig wrote: post #261
Hellmitioksldf wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats actually my strategy; This makes it so that 1. my quality overall becomes better and my bosses always liked that (doing things per hand are more error prone, not on time etc.) 2. I can go on holiday knowing my company doesn't need me desperate 3. I can spend the free time of actually innovating and bringing more value to the company/product The problem is not automating yourself out of a job but not being able…

Despite productivity generally improving over the last few decades, wage compensation has not. I'm concerned this will continue as a trend with any productivity improvements from these models.

All the productivity gains are first transferred to the consumer(because of market dynamics) and then(by the market winners) to shareholders. The workers' wage market is not related to productivity but how the company is internally organized is linked to productivity.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#308

Post by blahblah1234567 »

themodelplumber wrote: post #84
jawns wrote: post #20

The problem is that you never really know whether the chat bot gets it right or terrifically wrong unless you already know how to do the task yourself. And in some cases, paying an analyst $50/hr. for a higher degree of confidence than you can get from a $1 chat bot is still very much worth it. The stakes are higher, too. If the chat bot gets it wrong, what are you going to do, fire it? There goes a small trickle of…

> $50/hr Is this somewhere's going rate for a good data analyst?

In early 2018, I made $105k salary as an entry level "Business Systems Analyst" in San Jose, CA.

Rented a studio in Milpitas for $1200 at the time.

I built a data integration system with NodeJS, and marketing/customer service enterprise software REST APIs.

It was my first professional programming job. No STEM degree, but a few IT Courses, plus digital marketing experience, plus self-taught full stack web app experience.

Re: Replacing a SQL analyst with 26 recursive GPT prompts

#309

Post by knodi123 »

layer8 wrote: post #55
knodi123 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody is really replacing somebody with a program that confidently get half it's answers wrong I gotta tell you, I use copilot to help with my coding, and it still sends a shiver down my spine when it writes the entire database migration based off of the filename, or writes 4 pages of automated tests that work right on the first try.

> writes 4 pages of automated tests that work right on the first try Not sure that’s the right criterion to assess the quality and adequacy of tests.

lol, fair enough, but I would never commit a line of code I hadn't carefully read myself. my new class was basic, so the new unit test was basic as well, but it was thorough and correct. And I exaggerated a bit; I did write 3 or 4 comments to give the ai some idea of where I was heading.
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