Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Unexpected Speaker Gifts

    I got two packages this week, both unexpected. They were nice surprises.

    First, a huge thanks to the Cloud Summit and Stephen Simon for running a great event and for allowing me to speak. This was quite an event, across many days with lots of sessions. I opened a package and found these items:

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    A nice commemorative trophy for my desk, a shirt, a few stickers, and a neat spinner keychain. I also got a charging cord with a key ring that has UCB A, C, and micro B. Quite handy to keep these around, as I always find a time or place I’m missing one.

    A second package came from a corporate conference I was involved in. A beautiful overnight bag, an erasable notebook, and a keyring with a BT tracker.

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    I’m honored and pleased when I get chosen to speak. I don’t expect gifts, but I’m always happy when someone goes to the effort to send something.

  • A Strange AI Achievement

    We are seeing AI and ML becoming used in more and more industries, but one that seems to be a place where it is embraced with some success. From speech recognition and transcription to analyzing imaging, computers have helped medical professionals improve the care they give to patients.

    Just as CAD has helped manufacturers, AI systems are being used in medical research, trying to model and screen medications to try and determine which ones are potentially useful in treating various diseases. We also have used them to better tailor treatments for certain diseases, like some cancers. It seems that applying computing against vast troves of data is proving itself beneficial.

    What if an AI were able to develop something new and it were awarded the Nobel Prize? That’s the premise in a scenario published in the Economist. The article opens with the controversy of how the guidelines for the prize are interpreted, paving the way to award the prize to the AI. Perhaps even more interesting in the scenario is that the effort is the result of a poor software upgrade that allowed the AI to read more medical papers that it was previous given access to examine.

    It’s an interesting idea. Who gets the credit? Certainly, the humans that help train the model and put it to work deserve some credit, but they are really the assistants. If they were to use the prize for more research, do we think they could replicate the innovation? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Not many people win the Nobel prize twice. Perhaps using the prize to continue allowing the AI to conduct research would make the most sense, though I don’t know if the humans around the system would accept that.

    I don’t think AI systems are more intelligent than humans, but they can consider and try more possibilities than humans, given enough data. They might notice something that we’d miss, and they can remain more focused on a problem than we can. After all, we need to rest and care for our bodies.

    I don’t know if this will happen in the 2030s, as the scenario imagines, but I do think this is a possibility as we start to use computing to search for new innovations in research. I just hope that as these discoveries take place, they are used to better the entire world, and not just enrich a few humans.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 24 Nov 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to make a meal using a recipe or ingredient you’ve not tried before.

    I like cooking, so this is easy for me. I will flip through recipes from a few mailing lists and look for something interesting. I ran across this list of 60 Easy Dinner ideas awhile ago, and I’ve been working through some of them. Not all, but some.

    I decided to do this one: Coconut Curry Ramen.  We like Ramen, and this was fairly simple. A quick cook in the pot and it was ready. I did do a few soft boiled eggs first.

    It was a fun, easy dinner, and one that the family enjoyed. I’ll add this to me permanent list of recipes to repeat.

  • Daily Coping 23 Nov 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to broaden your perspective: read something different.

    I tend to read a lot of fiction. If I flip through this year’s GoodReads, I see mostly books to help me escape. I tend to alternate between sci-fi, legal, mysteries, and thrillers. I sprinkle in a few coaching books and business books.

    One that I found different was Thanks for the Feedback. I’m in the middle of it now, and I didn’t really want to read it. A friend recommended it, as something that helped them grow. I don’t like reviews, but I decided this would be good for me.

    I found the book to be very interesting. It helped me to think about how I communicate with others, and how I might say something that is received differently. It also helps me think about how to react when someone gives me feedback.

    Quite a different read, but I’ve found it fascinating for me.