Smart Software Generates Lots of Wizards Who Need Not Know Much at All
October 25, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
How great is this headline? “DataGPT Users Generative AI to Transform Every Employee into a Skilled Business Analyst.” I am not sure I buy into the categorical affirmation of the “every employee.” As a dinobaby, I am skeptical of hallucinating algorithms and the exciting gradient descent delivered by some large language models.
“Smart software will turn everyone of you into a skilled analyst,” asserts the teacher. The students believe her because it means no homework and more time for TikTok and YouTube. Isn’t modern life great for students?
The write up presents as chiseled-in-stone truth:
By uniting conversational AI with a proprietary database and the most advanced data analytics techniques, DataGPT says, its platform can proactively uncover insights for any user in any company. Nontechnical users can type natural language questions in a familiar chat window interface, in the same way as they might question a human colleague. Questions such as “Why is our revenue down this week?” will be answered in seconds, and users can then dig deeper through additional prompts, such as “Tell me more about the drop from influencer partnerships” to understand the real reasons why it’s happening.
Hyperbolic marketing, 20-something PR, desperate fund raiser promises, or reality? If the assertions in the article are accurate, those students will have jobs and become top analysts without much bookwork or thrilling calculations requiring silliness like multivariate statistics or polynomial regression. Who needs this silliness?
Here’s what an expert says about this job making, work reducing, and accuracy producing approach:
Doug Henschen of Constellation Research Inc. said DataGPT’s platform looks to be a compelling and useful tool for many company employees, but questioned the veracity of the startup’s claim to be debuting an industry first. “Most of the leading BI and analytics vendors have announced generative AI capabilities themselves, with ThoughtSpot and MicroStrategy two major examples,” Henschen said. “We can’t discount OpenAI either, which introduced the OpenAI Advanced Data Analysis feature for ChatGPT Plus a few months ago.”
Truly amazing, and I have no doubt that this categorically affirmative will make everyone a business analyst. Believe it or not. I am in the “not” camp. Content marketing and unsupported assertions are amusing, just not the reality I inhabit as a dinobaby. Every? Baloney.
Stephen E Arnold, October 25, 2023
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