Voice of the DBA

Tag: AI

AI Experiments–Who am I and how am I remembered?

I saw someone noting that AIs shouldn’t write obituaries. Since I maintain sqlmemorial.org, I wanted to see what would happen for me.

This is part of a series of experiments with the ChatGPT and other AI systems.

First, a simple prompt. This was delayed for about 20s while the AI was processing data. I assume it was looking over the sites for my name.

When it started to write, I thought it did a decent job.

I then tried for an obituary.

I very much appreciate the first part of the response. It isn’t good to do this publicly, though for figures, there are people who have to write and update these things so they are prepared. Not that they won’t edit this if someone dies, but often journalists are prepared.

However, I also appreciate the kind words in the second para. I am not quite sure where/how this data was assembled, but it isn’t a part of any bio I’ve written.

Not bad, ChatGPT.

May 16, 2023
T-SQL Tuesday #162–Using AI with Data Science
This month is a timely topic, with Tomaz Kastrun hosting. I was lucky to meet Tomaz before the pandemic, and we had a great time at the SQL Saturday as well as at Lake Bled the next day.

Tomaz does a lot of data science with R, Python, and a lot of data. He has some great blogs and does a neat advent series every December. This month he asks us about Data Science in the era of ChatGPT, with two prompts:
- Where and what have you used it [ChatGPT] for?
- Have you considered responsible usage of Chat GPT?
I’ll tackle these below. First my experiments with the AI, and second, Ethics.

This is part of a series of experiments with the ChatGPT and other AI systems.

Getting a Visualization

One of Tomaz’ ideas was a visualization. I have some data, so I used this prompt:

A very poor prompt on my part, but the AI tried. I asked other questions and kept context of the process.

Not sure why the image didn’t appear, but there was an explanation, so I asked for code.

I got some code, and decided to restart this experiment. I started a new chat and recorded my efforts. That result is on YouTube and (hopefully) embedded below.

It wasn’t perfect, but I could see this being the way software developers end up using ChatGPT.

Ethics in AI

There are a lot of things to think about here, but let me focus in on two things. First, is it ethical to get paid for a job if you are asking ChatGPT for help? Second, is it ethical for ChatGPT to synthesize code samples from SQL Server Central, Stack Overflow, etc., that others have written, and give it to you to use in your code.

The first one is easy. I say yes, since this is what many of us do with colleagues. We ask them for help, they give us code or examples, and we use them in our work that we commit, turn in, etc. We don’t write all code by ourselves, so I see ChatGPT as asking someone else or posting on a forum.

The second one is tricky. If I see code on SQL Server Central, then I know who wrote it, or who posted it. If I use that, I need to have rights to do so, or give someone credit. For example, I can post this code:

–============================================================================= — Create and populate a Tally table –============================================================================= –===== Conditionally drop IF OBJECT_ID(‘dbo.Tally’) IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE dbo.Tally –===== Create and populate the Tally table on the fly SELECT TOP 11000 –equates to more than 30 years of dates IDENTITY(INT,1,1) AS N INTO dbo.Tally FROM Master.dbo.SysColumns sc1, Master.dbo.SysColumns sc2 –===== Add a Primary Key to maximize performance ALTER TABLE dbo.Tally ADD CONSTRAINT PK_Tally_N PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (N) WITH FILLFACTOR = 100 –===== Let the public use it GRANT SELECT, REFERENCES ON dbo.Tally TO PUBLIC
In doing so, I would give credit to Jeff Moden for writing this code. If I used this inside an organization, I should ask Jeff for permission.

If I get this from ChatGPT, it is providing sources? Potentially the AI read a lot of code and then synthesized something that works the same, but perhaps it’s also copied the most popular code it’s seen in many training sets of data. Hard to know.

It’s also hard to know what rights we want to give to the AI, it’s programmers, it’s corporate (or personal) owner, etc. How do we deal with rights here? I’m not sure. This is a an area where I don’t even know what I want.

What do you think?
May 9, 2023
Experiments with GitHub CoPilot

There has been a lot of attention given to ChatGPT and AI over the last month or two. I’ve tried a few things with the public interface at Open.ai. Some worked well, like this one:

Others not so well:

This post looks at a few things I tried with VS Code and GitHub Copilot.

Getting Access

I saw a note in our internal Redgate Slack that all developers were given access to Github Copilot. This is something you can subscribe to for about US$10/month, or if you are a student, you can get it for free. In my case, I filed a ticket:

It took a week or so as someone was out on holiday and this was a low priority ticket. In any case, I got a note from our ticket system, as well as GitHub, that I had access:

So I added the extension to VSCode.

Once installed, I got a note to sign in to GitHub, and when I had completed that, I saw the Copilot icon in the lower right corner of my IDE.

Getting Started

My first experiment was to open my ZeroDowntime client code and see what happened. This is a VS 2019 project, but I opened it in VSCode, specifically the form1.cs code. I highlighted some code and …

Nothing.

Then I tried something I’d seen. I added a comment above some code. Still nothing, but when I opened the Github Copilot completions panel, I saw this:

Not helpful, nor what I asked for. Both solutions were similar.

Starting from Scratch

I decided to then start from scratch. I created a new file, set this to C# and wrote this:

Initially I got nothing, but when I opened the Copilot panel I saw this:

That is more interesting. Clearly poor specifications on my part.

Let’s try something else. I added more detail, and as I did, Copilot even added a few things after to help me specify what I needed.

I finished these lines and hit enter and I got something, though not what I wanted.

Let’s try something else:

That’s better. Not great, but better. This doesn’t quite match what I asked for. I copied this to a template project and then added another comment. I want to check for the existence of the parameter, and I got this code, which is better than something I’d write.

Not quite right, and I have some lines to delete, but this gives me something, and as a middling C# dev, this is helpful. Once cleaned, I compiled and ran the code, and it seemed to work, at least for a very basic console app.

Let’s try SQL

I opened a new file, set the type to SQL and wrote a comment, using the appropriate comment style.

I guess that’s OK. Not great, but I didn’t provide much detail. Interesting that it chose to use a created_at column with a timestamp. I never use timestamp, which is deprecated. Not sure how the AI learned about this type, perhaps because of a large corpus of training data using old code with this? Who knows.

Let’s try something else. I’ll ask for a query using a known schema.

A start, but not quite right. I do have to keep hitting enter to get the query written. A couple more Enters and Tabs to accept code get me this:

If I keep going, I get a long query, but it doens’t work. At least not on my version of AdventureWorks.

Not great.

What if I add a comment? I’ll ask for window functions.

I get something else, but again, the final query doesn’t work. This time there are less errors, but the join listed seems to think the Customer table has a first name and last name, which it doesn’t.

Initial Thoughts

I’m not sure how useful this is. I think this is going to be one of those tools that I’ll have to practice with and understand how it works. My basic tests are mostly because I’m not sure what to do with it, or how it can be helpful.

I have lightly seen some demos, but I realize that I need to watch a few more and also experiment with the features. I was hoping it would clean up some of my C# code, which is fairly basic, but it didn’t, at least not with my prompts.

We’ll see how this goes, and I’ll see if I can use it in ADS and if it can actually recognize and use my database schemas to write queries or tests.

May 3, 2023
AI Concerns

I hosted a webinar a few weeks ago about Artificial Intelligence and how it might affect data professionals. It was an interesting discussion with Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman and Brian Randell, with all of us having slightly different perspectives. Overall, we all agree AI is amazing and can be a useful tool for data professionals.

This week I’ve been in Redmond at the MVP Summit, and AI has been a topic among many MVPs. Lots of jokes have been told, no shortage of which dealt with getting rid of staff. Not that these MVPs want to see less staff, but they know that executives and managers might see all the AI hype about how GitHub CoPilot writes code and think they need less developers.

I don’t know if that is really how executives will view the world, especially as most IT departments have more work than resources to complete their list of tasks. I can see AI helping get more done, which might mean less hiring (or slower hiring) in the future.

There was an article this week talking about ways to protect your job in the age of AI hype. It was interesting in that the suggestions all revolve around bringing more value to your job. The suggestions about working in specialized areas, complex areas, being a better employee with documentation, these are all things that I’ve done in my career. It’s what I also see from many MVPs.

Maybe the most interesting item was to think about incorporating AI into your work now. It’s not necessarily an expert on your work, but it is a tool. As the models absorb more information and become better trained, they can be a level to help you get more work done. They can assist you in tedious work, which is something many of us can benefit from.

I am looking forward to getting access to CoPilot and keeping an AI tool up on my desktop, learning how it might help me, and maybe more importantly, where it won’t help me.

I can’t stop this trend, but I can better understand it and learn how it might fit with my daily work. Knowing that helps me better understand how I might have an informed and rational discussion with management about the advantages or disadvantages of this new technology.

Steve Jones

April 22, 2023