Voice of the DBA

Tag: AI

  • Interviewing Avatars

    Imagine that you go to interview a candidate over Skype or even a phone call and the first thing you see or hear is: “Hi, my name is Hank, and I am an avatar. I will answer all your questions about Nick factually and completely, as if you’re talking directly to Nick. Are you still looking to fill this position?”

    That’s a quote from a blog post about HR and hiring issues. In this post, the author talks about a new system that allows a job seeker to use an avatar as a way to quickly apply for thousands of jobs. While this might be nice for the applicant, would any of you want to interview an avatar? Maybe you would a few times, or maybe you’d even start to like this as a way to get some basic information about a candidate. Of course, if the candidate has loaded up all sorts of technical facts from Inside SQL Server or How Would You Move Mount Fuji, then maybe you’re less interested.

    One one hand this is scary. On the other it’s awesome. I’d love to be able to answer some questions and provide some data about my career and goals and let an avatar go through initial screens. I wouldn’t want this to be used anywhere past the initial interview, but certainly it would help me to present a little more of myself in an interactive format. It could be a nice brand, and how fun would it be to interact with Steve’s avatar?

    In some sense, we might move in this direction. After all, this just levels the playing field between candidates and employers. Plenty of recruiting and HR people use their own software or algorithms to make quick decisions about a large number of applicants. I certainly know that you need to stand out with your brand and ensure your resume and online profile attract attention and this could help with that.

    Think about this. Is there a way to better present the data and information about ourselves, using technology to respond and help ensure that the position is a good fit for each of us? Hiring managers might use this, why not us? Actually, they are using Alex and Mya. Would this be a better way for you to control and show off some of your work? Even have the avatar show how you solved problems or responded to different situations? While this seems silly or science fiction, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this type of avatar-avatar interaction being used early in the process to decide if both parties should move forward.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Help from Cortana

    I’ve been reading about and watching some of the experiments that people are conducting with Cortana and other types of devices. I’m not quite sure what I think, though I would like to experiment with Cortana at some point and see how useful a computer assistant might be. I have tried to make notes of ideas that I think could be helpful, but for some reason I haven’t really gotten the speech bug. I don’t talk to my computer or phone very often, with the exception being texting with my family while driving. In that case, speech is handy and much safer than anything else. My wife is the opposite; she really likes speech.

    It seems many companies have been working to implement more assistant-like interactions with users. Amazon has the Echo and Dot devices with Alexa, Google has the Home speaker, and I’m sure more and more devices are coming over time. I don’t know how useful these are in multi-person situations where people are speaking, but it does seem that some people like the help from devices. Perhaps I’m too much of a DYI person, since I prefer to push buttons and make my own selections. However, it seems some people prefer to talk, even in busy, loud, crowded situations.

    Many of us are data professionals, and even if we aren’t planning on using speech, there is the possibility that bots or other technologies might help us improve the way we work with databases or help our customers use the information we manage. I’ve seen some interesting interactions with Slack, including one company that allows limited developer access to systems through a Slack bot that handles some provisioning work, including raising and closing a ticket, without requiring human interactions.

    I could even see some sort of alerting or “check this soon” interactions that might alert developers or administrators to take actions in a more casual way, perhaps doing so as part of a conversational queue of things to check rather than a list of items in a tool or a stack of email messages. An interactive assistant can be useful not only in providing information, but managing the flow to prevent overload. A personalized assistant might even do a better job or reminding you of items over time, perhaps anticipating future needs, or realizing some task hasn’t been completed in some time. Certainly the same type of bot or agent might perform work on your behalf.

    This week, I’m wondering how many of you might find ways that a narrow, niche assistant might help you. Is there something in your work that an assistant might help you do? Or maybe there’s some way that a device might help you in your life, separately from a simple notification on your mobile or through email. Perhaps in conversation or in a semi-structured fashion. I’m sure many of you have a creative way that you might like to see technology assist you.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • The Downsides of AI

    I remember reading about AI as a college student, and I always wondered if we’d get computing algorithms that might actually make better decisions than informed humans. As my tech career grew, I saw the advancement in systems, like Deep Blue, that showed we could build better systems that might beat humans at their own games. The recent success of AlphaGo makes me wonder what the next challenge will be?

    Certainly machine learning (ML) and AI-like systems are becoming quite popular in business these days. More and more companies are trying to find ways to use these computer science tools to improve their organizations capabilities. Whether these techniques will continue to be popular remains to be seen, but in the short term, all the efforts of companies like Microsoft and Amazon will get many companies to try to build intelligent systems.

    There is a lot of data being used to fuel these AI and ML applications, so it’s a natural fit that many data professionals will want to be involved. It’s a complex area, where lots of data is used to conduct lots and lots of experiments. That type of work my not suit many of you, but give it a try on one of these platforms and see what you think. Perhaps this is work you will enjoy. However, even if you enjoy the work and become good at it, there’s potentially some issue that may impact the use of these systems.

    We don’t know how most of the applications actually work. That’s because we haven’t programmed them. In some sense, many of these systems learn from data, and with a little guidance, but there isn’t necessarily a debug log that might explain all the actions. That is perhaps the dark secret of AI. We don’t really understand what’s going on.

    The article linked above looks at autonomous cars, which a number of companies are researching and building. One of the issues with the complex system(s) that runs the car is that we don’t necessarily know how it works. This might not bother technical people, but it certainly does bother many people. When there is a problem, and there will be a problem since there are always failures, how do we determine what went wrong and make it better? Add more data and retrain the system? I’m not sure that is a solution that most people will accept.

    Ultimately I think some of the research and work on AI needs to focus on allowing the model to output a set of data on what data is being weighed and the impact on the flow of information that leads to a decision. I know this is a tremendous amount of data, but it is probably the type of analysis that is needed for accountability in these systems. After all, it’s not just cars where this matters. Imagine that your have an AI system that cuts off all AC in the summer, or decides not to order enough resources for a busy time period. How do we explain to management that “the system just decided” on that course of action? I really think we need better tools for analyzing these models.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Who’s Smarter? Humans or AI Systems?

    I used to watch science fiction movies and imagine we’d have these incredible machines that could interact with humans in amazing ways. I always believed more in the helpful and useful AI in Star Wars than the dangerous systems of movies like The Terminator or The Matrix. I could even imagine a time when we have sentient systems, though I’m not sure they are coming anytime soon.

    I used to assume the Asimov’s Laws of Robotics would be implemented without any issue. After all, doesn’t everyone worry about security? These days I’m more cynical, and I wonder if anyone would actually bother to program limitations in a system. I expect more people would assume we’ll add in the laws later, once we know the other features are working.

    I do think we will get more and more systems like IBM’s Watson, that are designed to handle many tasks. When I read pieces like this one from HBR, I actually get a little worried. Not because machines will destroy humans, but they will greatly impact and change our society, potentially in disruptive ways for society. While we’ve seen issues with manufacturing over the years, there are still humans involved, and we have learned to find other jobs over time.

    The AI revolution, if that’s what’s happening, will occur quicker, and if the HBR piece is correct, will impact many more people, across a shorter period of time. Our economies and workforce may not adapt as quickly, which has a variety of economic implications for all of us, even those of us that might be secure in our positions. If we can teach systems to accomplish tasks at a level even close to what the average human can do, we might find ourselves either out of a job or working with some sort of robot.

    I don’t know how quickly we’ll advance, or even how far we will go, but I do find that the leverage offered by implementing advanced technology is certainly increasing in a way that worries me.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.