The Recording
The Panelists
- Kevin Feasel
- Mala Mahadevan
- Mike Chrestensen
- Tracy Boggiano
Notes: Questions and Topics
Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Build was the day after our prior episode of Shop Talk, so this time around, we dove into Microsoft Fabric. I answered some questions for Mala and gave her a better idea of where this fits in the modern data warehousing world. We spent a bit of time talking about licensing, and I talked a bit about why I really don’t like the name.
OpenAI and Yet Another LLM Rant
One of these days, I’ll stop ranting about LLMs. Probably when the next thing hits the peak of the hype cycle. We spent some more time talking about OpenAI and LLMs, as it seemed that about 2/3 of Build content was geared that way. I was surprisingly less critical of it than I have been over the past few weeks, but I think that’s just an internal attempt not to go too far overboard in my critique—it’s not that there’s zero utility in LLMs; it’s that humans need to be in the loop the whole time, and we need to remember that these are language models and not fact models. I also talked a bit about a great article by Eric Hartford on uncensored models. I completely agree with Eric: it’s fine to add your own bias after the fact—for example, I don’t want my corporate-friendly chat assistant to start engaging in lewd conversation with potential customers—but I also don’t like the idea of some unrelated organization deciding what’s acceptable and what isn’t.