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Question of the Day

Changing the Default

The Voice of the DBA

Constitutional AI

I will admit that I don't know a lot about AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems and how they are built. I've been playing with them a bit and haven't been overly impressed with the results. I think some of this is that lots of the nature of my work is creative and I'm both used to being creative and I find the AIs less creative. And less accurate. And require a lot of editing.

From my understanding, a lot of the models behind AI systems (chatbots, recommenders, etc.) are built with humans giving them feedback on their responses in what's known as RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback). Essentially paid (often low paid) people that help to "guide" the AI into responses that are useful.

I don't quite know how that looks, and I certainly don't want a job doing that. Definitely not if it's looking at a lot of UIs like the one in this article. Can you imagine being paid to read things like this and then try to rank them? I can't imagine they keep getting great input from evaluators across the day. Maybe 9am-10am, but I'd bet the 4pm-5pm responses are quick clicks.

There was an article about a company trying something different: constitutional AI training. There's a better description on the Anthropic website. It seems in this case they are creating some principles and limited human feedback, but then relying on an AI to give feedback to another AI? Or itself? I have to admin that I'm not completely sure of what happens here.

Ultimately, I like the idea here, but I think the idea of a single LLM/AI model that suits every situation, or one that works in every geography doesn't make sense. We have different thoughts among people and different cultures all over the world. I'd expect that we might have different types of AIs in different situations or environments. The one that helps decide how to deal with nuclear safety likely needs to be different from the one governing traffic signals. I certainly don't want one TruthGPT to be the one true voice on all things.

The idea of AI systems, assistants and more seems more complex and more strange than anything I'd have imagined from reading science fiction. As with many things, the reality is far different from the speculation I've had about how I would respond or want a system to behave. I think that's the nature of science fiction; it picks specific situations and tailors the story to fit. The real world is much more messy.

I don't know where we go, but I'm curious as many of you have had more exposure to AI. Is it helping? Hurting? Useful? Are you excited or worried for the future? I'm curious what you think, mostly because I'm not sure what I think.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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Create Your First Pipeline in Microsoft Fabric

arindamxs from SQLServerCentral

Learn how to get started with a Microsoft Fabric pipeline.

PASS Data Community Summit 2023

Additional Articles from PASS

Check out the full details for this year's Pre-Cons and Learning Pathways, and find out why some of our speakers are particularly excited for what’s in store this year. If you’re not already on the mailing list, sign up now and be the first to know all Summit 2023 updates.

Modifying MySQL data from within Python

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

In the previous article in this series, I introduced you to how to access MySQL data from within a Python script. The article described how to use the MySQL Connector to establish a connection with a database and then retrieve data through that connection. In this article, I continue the discussion by demonstrating how to insert, update, and delete data in a MySQL database, again working with Python and the MySQL Connector.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - How do I tell if a user is orphaned or actually created without a login?

Kenneth.Fisher from SQLStudies

One of the wonderful things about blogging is the ability to make notes for future me. Which is basically what ... Continue reading

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Steps to Have a Service Principal Take Over a Dataset in Power BI When Using Data Gateways

Angela Henry from SQL Swimmer

A little background for those new to using Power BI and Data Gateways. If the data source for your Power BI dataset lives on-prem or behind a private endpoint,...

Azure SQL Revealed: A Guide to the Cloud for SQL Server

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Access detailed content and examples on Azure SQL, a set of cloud services that allows for SQL Server to be deployed in the cloud. This book teaches the fundamentals of deployment, configuration, security, performance, and availability of Azure SQL from the perspective of these same tasks and capabilities in SQL Server. This distinct approach makes this book an ideal learning platform for readers familiar with SQL Server on-premises who want to migrate their skills toward providing cloud solutions to an enterprise market that is increasingly cloud-focused.

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Changing the Default
I have run this code in SQL Server 2019, which has no objects in the dbo schema: CREATE USER apiuser FOR LOGIN apiuser WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=webapi GO ALTER ROLE db_datareader ADD MEMBER apiuser GO CREATE TABLE webapi.states (stateid INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT statespk PRIMARY KEY, statecode VARCHAR(2), statename VARCHAR(20)) GO INSERT webapi.states (stateid, statecode, statename) VALUES (1, 'AK', 'Alaska') GO I log in to a second query window as apiuser and run this code: SELECT TOP 10 s.statename FROM states AS s; GO This works and I get Alaska returned. I now run this code in my first, administrative window, knowing there are no objects in the Sales schema: ALTER USER APIUser WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=Sales GO I return to my second window, which is still logged in and connected to the SQL Server. What happens when I run this code? SELECT TOP 10 s.statename FROM states AS s; GO
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

What will be inserted?

I query my sys.identity_columns and sys.objects views and get this data back (only a few columns shown):

TableNameColumnNamelast_valueincrement_value
DataWithTimemyid        1002            1

I run this code:

INSERT dbo.DataWithTime (Mydata, mytime) VALUES ('F', NULL)

If I query the table for "F", only one row comes back. What is the value for myid?

Answer: 1003

Explanation: The last_value is the last value inserted. The next insert will use the last_value with the increment added. Ref: sys.identity_columns - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/system-catalog-views/sys-identity-columns-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16

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Database Pros Who Need Your Help

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