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The boundless demand for insight | Hex

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What happens when a computer can write SQL or Python better than any human? Do all the data jobs go away? This is the basic form of a complex question that people are asking in the Age of LLMs; as it turns out, a lot of data practitioners’ tasks are both highly specialized (e.g., require arcane knowledge of pandas or SQL syntax) and also pretty rote (e.g., writing out that same syntax over and over). And those happen to be the kind of tasks that LLMs seem really well suited for. So, it's easy to imagine the Executives gearing up to replace all the data people with computers. The future is weird and uncertain, but I really don't think that's what's going to happen. First, the job of a data practitioner is a lot more than just writing code or making charts. Knowing what questions to ask, or how to ask it, or anticipating the next twenty things that the Head of Marketing is inevitably going to want are not specialized nor rote, and don’t feel particularly at-risk from LLMs. But one may st

The boundless demand for insight | Hex Skip to main content Blog The boundless demand for insight What coal and Jevons’ paradox tell us about AI and data Barry McCardel Data teams August 7, 2023 Share: What happens when a computer can write SQL or Python better than any human? Do all the data jobs go away? This is the basic form of a complex question that people are asking in the Age of LLMs ; as it turns out, a lot of data practitioners’ tasks are both highly specialized (e.g., require arcane knowledge of pandas or SQL syntax) and also pretty rote (e.g., writing out that same syntax over and

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