One of the big announcements has to do with AI in the DB for SQL Server 2017… what does that mean for you?
What I mean by that is, when you hear that SQL Server supports R and will be supporting Python, what types of projects come to mind? Having the artificial intelligence and machine learning and language support and all of that – all baked in is really exciting thing when you think about the things that we’ll be able to do. I’m curious what types of projects will be bubbling up in the real world.
And just think, soon (no, this hasn’t been announced and I don’t know anything about it nor have I heard about it, it just seems logical), perhaps we’ll have clustered intelligence baked in. Perhaps you’ll be able to set up a trusted network of SQL Servers and have not only machine learning and AI and all of that on your own instances, but have it be able to start sharing. Learning from other instances as well.
Not to be overly dramatic, but anyone for the Borg?
It certainly hasn’t escaped my own thoughts on this whole thing about where this all goes – when you also have to consider what it could mean on the good side, and the not so good. Many of the warnings you hear about AI today have to do with run away “learning” and intelligence at machine speeds outpacing human controls and learning.
Of course there is good in “run away learning,” but at the same time, it leads to things like so many movies we’ve all seen – from Star Trek to Terminator and many others.
I keep hearing about controls that have to be developed, and not letting the computers outpace humans. On the one hand, isn’t that literally the point of all this? To have them learn and be able to support work that needs to be done in a more efficient, better way? Cure cancer, learn to support humanity, all of those great big goals.
The downside is the stuff of movies though.
And yes, I realize this is more than a few days away on the horizon, but the time of change we’re all living through and working through right now is astonishing. And the next release of SQL Server is one more step in all of that. That, along with the computing resources you have at your fingertips (sorry Bill) in the cloud with Azure and AWS and others are nearly limitless.
To think we’re going to control all of this is, I believe, a tough call to make in any convincing way.
I don’t even say all of this to sound a warning, just that we need to be aware, we need to apply technology and we do need to be trying to foresee the downside and protect against that as well.
Think “Prime Directive” type stuff I suppose.