Hi all,

I have been tasked with the gargantuan task of understanding and eventually implementing what is effectively turning our database into an all-knowing human.

What they want at the base level is to be able to open up a chat bot or similar and ask "where can I put an ice cream shop in <x region of our portfolio>?" And the result should be able to reason against things like demographics in the area, how many competing ice cream shops are in the area, etc.

They also want it to be able to read into trends in things like rents, business types, etc., among many other "we have the data, we just don't know how to use it" questions.

You may be sitting there saying "hire a data analyst" and I agree with you but the ai bug has bitten c-level and they are convinced our competition has advanced systems that can give this insight into their data with a snap of a finger.

I don't know if this is true but regardless, here I am knee deep in the shit trying to find some kind of solution. My boss thinks we can throw everything into a datalake and connect it to chatgpt and it will just work, but I have my reservations.

We have one large database that is "relational" (it has keys that other tables reference but they rarely have proper foreign keys, this is a corporate accounting software specifically for commercial real estate and was not our design and is 30 years old at this point) and we have a couple of smaller databases for things like brokerage and some other unrelated things.

I'm currently of the opinion that a datalake won't do much for us. Maybe I'm wrong but I think cultivating several views that combine our various tables in a sensible way with sensible naming will help to give AI a somewhat decent chance at being successful.

My first entry point was onelake + powerbi + copilot, but that isn't what they're looking for and it's ridiculously expensive. I then looked at powerbi "q&a" which was closer but still not there. You can do charts and sums and totals etc but you can't ask it introspective questions, it just falls on its face. I don't think it was designed for the type of things my company wants.

I have since pivoted to retrieval augmented generation (rag-ai) with azure openai and I feel like I'm on the right path but I can't get it to work. I'm falling face first through azure and the tutorials that exist are out of date even though they're 3 months old. It's really frustrating to try to navigate azure and fabric and foundry with no prior understanding. Every time I try something I have to create 6 resource group items, permissions left right and center, blob stores, etc, and in the end it just...doesn't work.

I think I'm headed in the right direction. I think I need to make some well formatted views/data warehouses, then transform those into vector matrices which azure's openai foundry can take and reason against in addition to the normal LLM that 4o or o1 mini uses

I tried to do a proof of concept with an exported set of data that I had in a big excel sheet but uploading files as part of your dataset is painful as they get truncated and even if they don't, the vectorizing doesn't seem to work if it's not a PDF or image etc.

I need to understand whether I'm in the right universe and I need to figure out how to get this implemented without spending 10 grand a month on powerbi and datalakes that don't even work the way they want.

Anyone got any advice/condolences for me? I've been beating my head against this for days and I'm just overwhelmed by all the buzz words and over promises and terrible "demos" of someone making a pie chart out of 15 records out of the contoso database and calling it revolutionary introspective conversational AI

I'm just tired 😩

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Both fiction and nonfiction alike are valid. Also, be sure to explain why you think the book has appeal beyond its range.

I sometimes use chatGPT to proofread longer texts (like 1000+ words) I write in English. Although this is not my first language, I often find myself writing in English even outside of internet forums. That is because if I read or watch something in English, and that thing motivates me to write, my brain organically gravitates toward it.

My English is pretty good and I am reasonably confident communicating in that language, but it will never be the same as my native language. So I will often run my stuff through Grammarly and chatGPT. If you wanna say "This will teach you bad habits", please don't. Things like Grammarly and Google Translate taught me so much and improved my English so much, that I am a bit tired of that line of reasoning. I read most of my books in English. I'm not a beginner so I can and do check for all the changes, and vet them myself as I don't always agree with them.

With GPT, I usually just ask it to elaborate a critique rather than spit out a corrected version. Truth be told, when I did ask for a corrected version, it made plenty of sensible corrections that didn't really alter anything other than that. So I guess I just wanna know everyone's feelings about this. Suppose I write a bunch, have GPT correct it for me, compare it with the original and verify every correction. Is that something you would look at unfavorably?

Thanks!

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I've been seeing this girl that I met on hinge for about a month and a half or so. We've hung out a couple times a week during this period, had deep conversations, gotten to know each other better, had sex, etc etc. However, I ultimately realized I wasn't feeling it, and tonight, I went to her place and told her. I was a bit nervous as I am pretty new to dating dating, and I wasn't sure how she'd take it. (My only relationship was for three years in college with someone I met through school, so I've never really gone on "dates" before, if that makes sense). She said she was a bit disappointed and surprised by this since it was going well, but she was ultimately cool about it. I stayed for a bit, and we talked about what online dating is like.

She said that she appreciated me coming over to tell her this, because I was the only guy that she's seen for about this long that didn't ghost her. I actually didn't believe her at first. But, I talked to my friends, and it sounds like this is just an accepted thing that happens with online dating?

Maybe I'm naive, but it feels strange. When you bump into a stranger on the sidewalk, you say "sorry" - but if you've been seeing someone multiple times a week for a month and been intimate with each other, you just stop texting them back? It feels like not giving someone the common courtesy of even just a text message letting them know you're not interested is almost like not seeing them as a person, even less so than the stranger you bumped into on the sidewalk who you acknowledged.

Maybe I'm just new to this, but online dating feels a bit broken. Is ghosting really as common as people seem to say it is? Am I overreacting and making a bigger deal out of this than it actually is? I'm in the bay area, is this a localized phenomenon? I'm not sure. In either case, I think I'm done touching dating apps for a while. I've met a handful of cool people through them and had my fun, but it's just exhausting. I'd rather let something happen naturally.

I guess this post is more of a rant than anything, but maybe some others with more experience than I have some useful insight to share.

Anyone watching? That interception by Philly was great!

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Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

The behavior of a bluetooth device when it reaches low battery is never advertised, and a lot of the time no one even mentions it in the reviews. My experience is that most devices give you an audio warning on repeat until you charge it, which is obviously bad design.

Can anyone recommend a bluetooth receiver that doesn't do this? I've heard that apple airpods only warn you once or twice, but my preference is for a battery-powered bluetooth receiver that lets me plug in wired headphones. I'm still interested in hearing about other bluetooth headphones though.

If there's nothing on the market, it might be interesting to try and build something. There must be bluetooth modules you can buy, but I wonder if they would have the same problem. Maybe you can modify the firmware? If anyone out there is hardware-hacking bluetooth devices, let me know.

I've been rereading The Fellowship of the Ring and saw the mention of Hobbits having their coming of age at 33.
"At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three."

It made me wonder what all of your opinions are on adulthood/coming of age. Some questions I thought might be interesting around this topic include:

• Are there any coming of age ceremonies where you live or that you partook in?
• Are there any coming of age ceremonies you've heard of that you think would have been cool to participate in or think should be more widely adopted?
• When did you feel like you were an adult?
• Do you think the legal age that someone is considered an adult in your country should be changed?
• Do you think there are some things that should be age gated beyond the age of legal adult good? (I.e.: in the US alcohol being restricted to those who are 21+ years of age while someone is a legal adult at 18.)

Curious to see your thoughts on this!