Tag: AI

If you’re a fan, no. You’re chomping at the bit, waiting to get everyone using GenAI models in their work. If you’re skeptical, then you might think it’s never coming to take your job, be a personal assistant, help you with coding, etc. Pick the task it won’t help you with.

A more nuanced view, which is similar to mine, is from Kendra Little, in which she says AI will eliminate DBA Jobs  Faster Than You Think, I’m not quite as pro-AI as Kendra, mostly because I see so many companies that are slow to change, slow to adopt new tech, slow to adjust their thinking. They just soldier on and keep running their business, as they’ve been doing for decades. Even when you might make a case for change, or prove it’s worthwhile, they just don’t spend the time to change.

Make no mistake, change takes time. And time is a valuable and limited resource. Even if you don’t appreciate time’s value, many of you still don’t want to spend time on new things.

In the piece, Kendra notes that she has been using an AI Agent to help get work done. She sees that agent getting better at tasks and helping her get work done quicker. At some point, she knows the GenAI agent will be able to help her do the work of multiple people. Not eliminating DBA jobs, but reducing the need. Can we have 3 DBAs instead of 5 or 10? Can we get down to 2, or even 1 with a part-time DBA service?

I do think that GenAI models and agents will help people get more work done, which might reduce the number of people an organization needs. However, I see no shortage of work in most organizations. In fact, I know of a few friends who can’t seem to hire a talented DBA. Perhaps a GenAI agent can support them and help them get work done without the need for a DBA. Not now, of course, but maybe in a year or two.

However, humans still need to be in the process, and I suspect, even with an AI agent for every human, there’s still a lot of work to get done. I’m not convinced this will reduce employment. I think it could increase employment, though the bar for employees will rise.

At least in some places. In some, they’ll keep doing the same thing they’ve been doing since 2001, or 1994, or 1983.

Steve Jones

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Erin Stellato, a program manager at Microsoft, asked a very interesting question on LinkedIn: “why do you *not* want a Copilot in SSMS?”

That got me to stop and think a minute. Why don’t we want to use an AI to help us? It’s a good question, given the hype and (maybe) potential of the technology. While it might not help you now, or with your specific thing, it might help others, so are there good reasons not to use AI technologies, like the GenAI LLMs?

Let me know today. What are you reasons for not using them (apart from cost or restrictions at work)?

I will say that I rarely use AI tech to get work done, or even in my home life. I just don’t enough places where I think I need help outside of a search. I search a lot, but I haven’t found AI to be faster than searching. Sometimes it is, but sometimes not and the unreliability of the tech bothers me. That being said, I do have a tag where I write about the AI things with which I am experimenting.

I think for many of us, AI is too amorphous and unclear. We don’t quite know when it helps or doesn’t. We don’t know how to judge the quality of it. It’s also not a habit or integrated into life. Most of the suggestions I see in various places aren’t things I’d ask. The default page in my local mode has these suggestions:

• tell me a fun fact
• show me a code snippet of a website header
• give me ideas for what to do with kids’ art
• help me study for a college entrance exam

That last one might be the only question I ask, not for college, but maybe for something like an MS exam. However, is the AI better than a search? Maybe, but I’d have to try it. Right now I’d be tempted to just search for a list of things to study. Maybe the AI helps me find those better, but really I’d want it to quiz me on different things.

The problem is I don’t trust it to ask good, relevant questions, or necessarily give me the right answers if I asked it to quiz me.

I guess ultimately is I don’t have enough “I think an AI is better” reasons over the do what I normally do. Without substantial evidence AI is better, I don’t use it much. Do you feel the same way?

Steve Jones

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Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

I caught an article on AI skepticism and there was a point in the article where trust was mentioned. Specifically the reasons that people distrust an AI or tech tool is that it makes a mistake, so they stop using it. A few examples of this were using a writing AI that made a grammar mistake or a GPS routing device that added a wrong detour. In those cases the humans stopped using the assistance of the algorithm because they felt it wasn’t trustworthy.

What’s fascinating to me is that I had this same conversation with a human the day before. Someone mentioned they were working with a group and they misstated something. After that, the group stopped listening to all this person’s advice, thinking it was all suspect. Essentially one mistake overrides everything else.

Trust is a funny thing. It takes time to earn and gain trust from others, and it can be lost quickly with an action. Trust is a reliance, a belief, a confidence in something or someone. The way the GenAI is framed, and the way a system is presented to a user can have a huge impact on the level of trust we give to an GenAI-system. Tell someone the system is trusted or others are using it raises trust. Tell someone to be wary, and they’ll trust the system less.

I find that GenAIs are unreliable but not completely. They are trustworthy in some ways, but not in others. There are a few variations in the article (and in other places) that note that GenAIs are helpful, but we need to review their work. Essentially trust but verify, which isn’t a bad policy for any interaction with humans or AI systems. We learn to trust our co-workers, but that takes time. Some we might never trust and always review their work, while others we accept what they give us with minimal review.

It’s interesting to see such a wide variety of responses to the usefulness of GenAI systems. Some people find them amazing, some find them useless, some use them daily for small things, some never bother to submit a prompt. I find myself cautiously using them more and more, especially my local models, trying out different prompts in different areas. One thing I got out of the article is I ought to have more conversations with the GenAI, much as I would with a co-worker. I’ll try to do that more in the future and see how it goes…

In the meantime, how much do you trust AIs, other computer systems, or coworkers?

Steve Jones

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

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.