Latest / Agentic Conversations (formally mlops.community) / Managing Data for Effective GenAI Application // Anu Arora and Anass Bensrhir // #215
Transcript
- 0:00I had all my name is is as associate partner at Quantum
- 0:05Black. I mean speaking about the black.
- 0:09I like my coffee and I drink it three times a day.
- 0:13In the morning, latte in after lunch and espresso, and at night
- 0:19I drip coffee and I'm very big coffee enthusiast.
- 0:25My I'm underwater. I'm a principal data engineer
- 0:29with Quantum Black, and that's how I take my green tea.
- 0:35Welcome back to their Melbs Community podcast.
- 0:38I am your host Dimitrios and today we are talking with Anu
- 0:41and Annas about how data engineering is still hard.
- 0:47That is right folks. Despite the text to SQL models
- 0:51that have come out, it is not any easier.
- 0:55And that is what we get into today.
- 0:58Specifically, we go through some practical and understandable
- 1:03examples of how these folks are seeing Gen AI being used in the
- 1:10wild. But the challenges that they are
- 1:13encountering when they are seeing these use cases go from
- 1:20MVP to actual in production. You know, we love that in
- 1:26production. I mean, there were some
- 1:29incredible points that were hit on here in this conversation.
- 1:34The key example that I love was when they spoke about how ETL is
- 1:42now something a little bit different.
- 1:44The Genai or ETL of unstructured data is still very much a work
- 1:52in progress, and particularly when you have to look at things
- 1:57like data quality, data quality. When you're grabbing a PDF and
- 2:02you're trying to just get that data out of the PDF, how can you
- 2:05measure that data quality? That's much different than if
- 2:09you're tracking event like an event captured by hitting a
- 2:14button on a website, right? So that was fascinating.
- 2:18The other piece to that is when you are dealing with something
- 2:22like a use case like a rag, how do you update documentation?
- 2:28How do you update your rags so that the documents are saying
- 2:33the most up-to-date information possible and you make sure that
- 2:38that up to date information is what is used in your RAG?
- 2:44So you can think about something as trivial as saying like an HR
- 2:49policy has been updated from saying you have Now you've gone
- 2:55from a European vacation policy of 30 days a year to American
- 3:00vacation policy of two days a year and and those two days are
- 3:06expected to not be without Slack or e-mail on.
- 3:12And you're have you have your little rag going with your HR
- 3:16chat bot, and your HR chatbot is grabbing from the European
- 3:20policy. It's not grabbing from the
- 3:23American policy. What do you gotta do?
- 3:25Well, turns out you thought you deleted the documentation where
- 3:30it had the different policy on it, but you didn't delete it
- 3:34everywhere. And because of that it just it
- 3:36just makes this vector database that you're using in absolute
- 3:40landmine because the LM will grab or it will get information
- 3:45that is potentially outdated. So keeping all of this stuff up
- 3:49to date is incredibly important and not as simple as we would
- 3:55think. There was all kinds of other
- 3:58gems in there. I'm going to let you all listen,
- 4:00figure it out for yourselves. If you enjoy this episode, leave
- 4:04a review. It would mean the world to me.
- 4:06And tell one friend we've got to give a huge shout out to our
- 4:12partners, Quantum Black, in this thank you so much for being part
- 4:17of the team, helping the MLA's community be what it is.
- 4:20Let's get into this conversation now.
- 4:29The fun part begins for we wanted to get into this
- 4:33conversation. I know because there's a lot of
- 4:36talk about MLM's and how useful they are and all that good
- 4:41stuff, and it feels like the data engineers have been left
- 4:45behind. They've been forgotten about.
- 4:47But in all reality, in my eyes, I think the data engineers are
- 4:54more of the hero than ever before.
- 4:57And so I want to discuss a little bit more about the data
- 5:02engineering landscape now that we have the LM's out and there's
- 5:06this LM craze and just we're now calling it a I.
- 5:11It's not ML anymore. It's all AI.
- 5:13We kind of shifted over to that, which I think is kind of funny.
- 5:17But today with us to talk about this, we've got I knew and and
- 5:21us and we should start with a bit of background anew.
- 5:26Can you kick it off? I know you mentioned you've been
- 5:28working at Quantum Black for the last seven years and you've been
- 5:32a data engineer for 13. So give us a bit of a breakdown.
- 5:36How did you get into tech? Hi everyone my name is anus.
- 5:40I'm based on London Ohh Tech. Indeed a right I mostly my role
- 5:46revolves around helping clients in building their scalable data
- 5:49pipelines altogether and capability building and defining
- 5:53their data architecture. It's been close to seven years
- 5:57here, so the I really enjoy working with data and solving
- 6:00the problems that are there with the data itself.
- 6:02Like you were talking about, right?
- 6:03LLM everybody talks about LLM, not many people talk about data,
- 6:07and that's where you give a competitive edge overall.
- 6:11I started my journeyasa.net developer long back, but I moved
- 6:14into this data Courier when everybody was talking about
- 6:17Hadoop and big data long back. And then that's why my journey
- 6:20has started overall and I'm going to be more than happy to
- 6:24talk about this. Yes, it feels like you're prime
- 6:29and ripe for this conversation. So, And what about you and us?
- 6:32How did you get into this whole field?
- 6:35Ohh look, I think it's such as probably 12 years ago.
- 6:39It has always started with data while measure was in data and AI
- 6:43and I've been doing data all my life.
- 6:45So I think that's the, I think the journey was on the, I think
- 6:51it were different industries but I think what I'm doing now
- 6:54Quantum Black, I'm concentrated more on the financial
- 6:58institutions. So what I do is that I help
- 7:01banks and insurance to get into Guy and Gini and basically put
- 7:08products in, in production, right.
- 7:10I think 1 aspect of it is how to know the enterprise tackle all
- 7:15of the beat engineering with all the different architecture and
- 7:19technologies and different maturity levels.
- 7:22We're happy to be here today. I think subject is very close to
- 7:26my heart also. All right, folks.
- 7:29So we know we've got these looms out there.
- 7:32And before we get into how Willms are affecting data
- 7:37engineering, let's talk a little bit about how data looks and how
- 7:44data engineering looks in this new paradigm, in this new shift
- 7:48that we have. And maybe on us you can kick us
- 7:52off. No, very good.
- 7:54So I think as you know like data engineering has I called stepped
- 8:01over is a subject is very important to basically get a
- 8:06data and give it to a model and then get your size from the
- 8:09model. So it always has been important
- 8:12from the normal reporting side to the AI when we have that
- 8:18prediction models and all of it. And now I think it's way more
- 8:22important now with Jenny, right, because previously we were
- 8:27touching on structured data and we had solved it.
- 8:31We we found solutions to measure the quality, to build pipelines
- 8:36and basically to do lineage on the data and to have
- 8:40predictability about the output. Now I think with Genai, I think
- 8:46data quality is way more important because we are
- 8:49basically touching and using structured data.
- 8:53I think also the output is also touching a lot of potential
- 9:00users in the end. So I think this engine has been
- 9:03important. It's still very important now
- 9:05and I'm happy to to say also that I think now that
- 9:13engineering is also being empowered by the AI.
- 9:16So it's not that it is important now, more important, but I think
- 9:21now it's also that a lot of our job back couple of years back
- 9:25now, it's been very easy or easier using AI.
- 9:31Just adding to that as well, like we were talking about here,
- 9:34right? Overall on this LLM aspect of it
- 9:37and also the UI, UX, right, like like let's take a step back when
- 9:42we are talking about data overall, right.
- 9:44If you're talking about one company versus another company,
- 9:47data is something that's going to be a key differentiator for
- 9:50you, which is going to give you a competitive advantage because
- 9:53that's what something which is owned by you.
- 9:55Other than that, when you talk about LLM or you talk about your
- 10:00UEX, right, BLM, everybody is using it as of today.
- 10:04UI, UX, you can build your UI but think of an example of
- 10:07Instagram, Snapchat or any feature that comes in.
- 10:10In one application. You can see where the other
- 10:13companies might be, might take inspiration and that feature can
- 10:16also pop up in that application. But there's another thing that
- 10:19is very important which is data so that can improve the customer
- 10:23experience and engagement for you overall.
- 10:25Like if you're thinking of an example for retail aspect,
- 10:28right? For a retail, you can have a
- 10:30customer. Your experience can get more
- 10:33personalised if the data is going to be used there. 100%,
- 10:37yeah. One thing that you mentioned in
- 10:39US, which I think is fascinating, is how we're now
- 10:43dealing with so much more unstructured data and how
- 10:48unstructured data all of a sudden, well, for a lot of us,
- 10:52all of a sudden, for others, it's like it's unstructured data
- 10:56has been my bread and butter for years, right?
- 10:58But for a lot of us, all of a sudden, it's like we need to
- 11:01learn so many new things when it comes to unstructured data.
- 11:05A lot of people had to learn what a vector database was and
- 11:08how to chunk different things, or how to parse out these, or
- 11:13even just like ingest PDF's and what does that look like?
- 11:16And I don't know if there's optimal solutions yet out there
- 11:20because it is still such a new field for all of these different
- 11:24pieces. But what do you feel like?
- 11:27Are some of these new paradigms that we've had to learn about
- 11:32because of this rise of unstructured data?
- 11:37No, very good. So I think it instructed data
- 11:40like I've been through the time like 2000, tens of 2008 where
- 11:46data leak was the new thing and the promised land of data leak
- 11:49was, hey, we can basically store videos and audios and and and
- 11:54make sense of it all. But I think until a couple of
- 11:58years back, nobody was putting the new structure days into the
- 12:01day today because we didn't have the tools to understand the
- 12:06video and get insights from it, right.
- 12:08So I think, yeah, now I think the Titanic is being used at its
- 12:15fullest potential because then we can store, process and use
- 12:20unstructured as structured data. So I think that component has
- 12:24been with the enterprise for the last 10 to 15 years.
- 12:27So that there's nothing to change.
- 12:29I think the new things here are all the new technologies
- 12:34basically that the enterprise and looking into using now.
- 12:38But I think the good news is that they don't have to throw
- 12:41anything away. Everything they have is still be
- 12:43valid, but I think there are some probably two or three
- 12:47additions they need to add to their stack, right?
- 12:51So I think #1 is virtual databases because basically if
- 12:54you want to build a rack, you basically need to store vectors
- 12:58into a database. So I think for the people who
- 13:04are basically want to be serious about it, selecting the right
- 13:08vector database and using it is key.
- 13:11I think that the other aspect is also integration with the other
- 13:15Dems because basically there are multiple archetypes offline and
- 13:19them online, a bit hybrid. So I think integration with the
- 13:23new component then with something new.
- 13:26The third bit is a bit the data management that we were doing
- 13:32with structured data. Now I think that the structural
- 13:38change now is that beforehand we're connecting to our table
- 13:41and we would get the insights right and we would also be able
- 13:45to measure the quality, recency and all of that.
- 13:47Now imagine that we're connecting to a mail server,
- 13:52we're connecting to document storage and we're connecting to
- 13:56video storage systems. So how do we get that data?
- 14:02How do we transform it? How do we store it and how do we
- 14:08measure the quality, right. So for example, on the PGA, how
- 14:11do we measure that input? There is right on, not always
- 14:15recent on that. So I think these are the new
- 14:17challenges. Luckily the data management
- 14:20companies have, I mean did they have also like discovered items
- 14:25recently, but I think they quickly designed and like new
- 14:31solutions basically like any 2 bit of data catalogue that you
- 14:34can ask it questions and then it will generate a SQL query for
- 14:39you or basically you can use the alum and measure if the PDF has
- 14:45PYD data, right. So I think these are the new
- 14:48things that we see data management companies
- 14:51introducing. And if I want to summarise, I
- 14:55think nothing to throw away the what stage apiece have been at
- 14:59investing on on data management or DTG tools.
- 15:04It's still very valid that probably 3 additions that I
- 15:09think my clients are looking at #1 is virtual databases.
- 15:13I think it's key. And the good thing is that we
- 15:15have many solutions of the show or on top of databases they had
- 15:19previously #2 is integration with 11.
- 15:23How to Figuring out how to make sure that data privacy is there.
- 15:27How to make sure that data OPS is there to to send data and
- 15:31receive data from the edit them. And the third bit is data
- 15:35management tools like the Etos, the data catalogue, the data
- 15:39quality tools that were very good at measuring structured
- 15:42data. And now we need to look at how
- 15:46to how to do this simply within structured data.
- 15:51There's something fascinating there that I want to hit on
- 15:54because there was actually, there was two things that jumped
- 15:56out at me from what you just said.
- 15:58And it's almost like up until recently, the data lake was
- 16:04where you would put your unstructured data.
- 16:06And it was like almost a place where unstructured data would go
- 16:10to die because you would throw it there and you would think, we
- 16:13need it, we need it, we're going to do something with it.
- 16:16But you wouldn't actually ever do something with it.
- 16:18And then, yeah, now this came out and it's like, oh, well,
- 16:22actually, maybe we can make use of this.
- 16:23Now let's figure it out. And then the other one which I
- 16:27think is fascinating to ponder about is how we have this new
- 16:31paradigm of ETL. And the ETL before where it was
- 16:35like how many times did someone click on something that isn't as
- 16:39relevant when you're dealing with LMS, it's more how can we
- 16:43ingest a PDF and make sure that we can look and get the tables
- 16:48correct. And so data quality in that
- 16:51regard is much different than the data quality and the regard
- 16:55of like are these in dollars or in euros?
- 17:01Why is it on the table? It says it's in dollars, but
- 17:03really it should be in euros. That's like a different type of
- 17:06data quality than what we're thinking about when we're
- 17:09ingesting a PDF and we're not able to correctly parse it out.
- 17:13So with that in mind, like when it comes to quality, how do you
- 17:19think about these things on you? How do you make sure, How can
- 17:22you, like, assure that the data quality is still there as you're
- 17:25ingesting all of these new forms?
- 17:27Or maybe new is not the right word because new is hard to say
- 17:31these days, but and these different types of data.
- 17:37Yeah, I think that's a very good question.
- 17:39Maybe in continuation to that also, I'll just put in one
- 17:42thing. There's also a misconception
- 17:44about that. You just put PDF in L and you'll
- 17:46get an answer. PDF is could kind of be huge,
- 17:48right? You have to break it down into
- 17:50chunks. People feel like, oh, I've got
- 17:51the data, just put everything in NLM and you'll get an answer.
- 17:54So there's a lot of preprocessing that needs to
- 17:56happen in the background as well.
- 17:58You break it down into chunks and then otherwise your cost is
- 18:01going to go so high with LLM. Now coming to your question on
- 18:05quality, right again, quality, it's got a lot of respect to it
- 18:09right when it comes to your data.
- 18:10So when you're doing a preprocessing, you have things
- 18:13in place where you cross checking there's no missing
- 18:16venues in there. Again when you've interpreted
- 18:19the data and loaded the data from PDFs, you ensure that you
- 18:23have a prompts written which is going to basically validate the
- 18:26inputs that you have. Overall going to ensure that
- 18:30you're not entering or adding any.
- 18:32The quality and privacy is is kind of going also another hand
- 18:36in hand which is cross checking you're not using any sensitive
- 18:38PII data and if your data is consistent as well.
- 18:43So there are a lot of tooling available in the market, I'm not
- 18:47going to go there. But again, you can have a
- 18:50prompts written in general that can help you in that case, and
- 18:53also some other enterprise tooling that is also integrating
- 18:56quality in place so that when you're reading that data, those
- 18:59cheques can be also applied. Now I I think, I think also if
- 19:06you look at the data quality, right.
- 19:09So now what's important is that you need to look at the data
- 19:13quality as an input, as a prompt and also as output, right?
- 19:19So I think I'm not going to talk about the news, but I think
- 19:22every week I'm hearing about that shut the box saying things
- 19:27that are not correct. Yeah.
- 19:31So I think there are many examples.
- 19:32I think this week we heard that a good story about like I bought
- 19:38about like a channel that company has gone through.
- 19:41So I think here we need to be a bit holistic about data quality,
- 19:45but we need to look at the input, we need to look at the
- 19:47prompt, we need to look at the output and the output.
- 19:49As I said that addressing the issues, there's also electricity
- 19:52and lots of new concepts, right. And I think also just for the
- 19:55data quality. So I think this is a very
- 19:58important subject because I had given specifically for example.
- 20:01So one of my client is an insurance.
- 20:03I basically they were very happy because what they have done is
- 20:06that it's a client. Trans business, so basically
- 20:10with big contracts with like business contracts, what they
- 20:13have contracts written interacts with some covers and some
- 20:18details about it. So typically what they were
- 20:21looking for to do is with an LLM basically we have a claim and
- 20:28then we'll look at the claim and we'll check whether it's covered
- 20:32by the policy or not, right. So to help a bit, the, I mean
- 20:37the insurance agent to make a quick decision because sometimes
- 20:41these contracts can be handed off pages depending on the size
- 20:45of the business and everything. So they did a PLC, very happy,
- 20:48it works fine. They have checked the value
- 20:51stick and they're happy. Let's go to production, right.
- 20:54But then I think when we were looking at the production,
- 20:59basically the question was, hey, these contracts, they're
- 21:03basically scanned and put into a document storage, right?
- 21:08How do we make sure that that contract has deleted?
- 21:11Because basically if we're helping that agent instead of
- 21:16reading 100 page and figuring out what to do, what if we
- 21:21uploaded the all we use in the previous version like the two
- 21:24years version where that cover wasn't there, the implications
- 21:28are huge, right. So I think then we set back on
- 21:30the client and figure out how to make sure that the input data is
- 21:34recent is correct and is specific to that particular
- 21:39customer, right. So I think data quality once the
- 21:43wave of do a PUC, let's check the value of our use case.
- 21:47Now it's getting worse. He used to take that you see and
- 21:51take it to production. And I think as I said, we need
- 21:54to look at the three layers of the tree steps, the inputs, the
- 21:58prompts where we have the chart history, where we have are
- 22:01basically the the context setting and also the output is
- 22:05key to make sure that more to production Is is a bit secure,
- 22:10yeah. Angry.
- 22:12And I think because of these issues, data engineering is not
- 22:15going anywhere. I think it's gonna get more
- 22:17important now. Yeah, I agree with you 100% on
- 22:21that one. That feels like a what every
- 22:25data engineer knows, because if it were going somewhere, I think
- 22:30the data engineers workloads would be lightened quite a bit.
- 22:34But if you know data engineers or you or you are data engineers
- 22:38and everybody else out there that knows data engineers knows
- 22:41that it's been the opposite. Like every day time.
- 22:44Every data engineer I know has been working their ass off since
- 22:49these elements came out because it's just like there's so many
- 22:52different things that you need to start thinking about and
- 22:54knowing about now and tail being covering for.
- 22:58Like us, you're talking about this idea of alright cool, we
- 23:01have this MVP that works, but then when you go to production,
- 23:04there's all these small details that you need to be thinking
- 23:08about where you need to be thinking.
- 23:11How are we continuously updating this so that if anything
- 23:15changes, like somebody upgrades their plan, we make sure that
- 23:19this upgrade gets added to the context.
- 23:22So all of that context, how are we making sure that it is
- 23:26continuously minute by minute or second by second, depending on
- 23:31how real fast we want to make it?
- 23:34How are we making sure that gets up to date?
- 23:36Yeah. Ohh, I think like I agree with
- 23:39you, like I think they just need is going nowhere.
- 23:41I think it's going to be more and more important and I think
- 23:46also the Daily News are also trying to adapt with the new
- 23:51business requirement and try to basically use these tools also
- 23:55to help them move quickly, right?
- 23:58Yeah, basically no complex and other challenges.
- 24:02Exactly, exactly. Because now that we have these
- 24:05different areas that we are cognizant of and the data
- 24:09engineers knowing that, OK, well, if this is possible for
- 24:14insurance claims, could it be possible for the work that I'm
- 24:17doing too and how can I make my life easier?
- 24:21And so I know there has been a lot of speculation on how LM's
- 24:24will affect things. Like we've seen a lot of text to
- 24:29Sequel models comes come out. And I kind of laugh about those
- 24:35because it's like every data engineer knows that writing the
- 24:39SQL query isn't necessarily the hard part in their job.
- 24:44But I would love to hear what are some areas that you have
- 24:47seen or think that these LM's could be used in the data
- 24:53engineering sphere. Maybe I can add from few
- 24:56elements and then as you can pitch in, of course I'll talk
- 25:01about the topics. And then of course there are a
- 25:02lot of guardrails around it which is regulations gonna be
- 25:05taking place. But let me start with a couple
- 25:07of things when it comes to writing the data pipelines
- 25:10altogether. Right.
- 25:11You can use a generator to help you with the data pipelines
- 25:16altogether. So which can help in stitching
- 25:18the code altogether. The other things could be unit
- 25:20testing, which is another important criteria where you
- 25:23generate the code altogether. There unit testing can be
- 25:27helpful Where Jenny I can help in the word in in my scenarios,
- 25:33I've seen it in synthetic data. So when you need like a
- 25:36synthetic data that needs to go in your integration testing,
- 25:40that mock data can also be generated based on that
- 25:43scenario. I've not used it, used it but it
- 25:47can also help further on classifications of your PII data
- 25:51which is tagging and also doing the data cataloguing altogether.
- 25:54But having said that, you have to put a lot of guardrails
- 25:58around it. There's an IP infringement.
- 26:00You have to be very careful. You can't just copy paste the
- 26:02code and you say OK, my work is done.
- 26:04So and with European AI Act also coming up, there are so many
- 26:09regulations that we have to be very careful with also when
- 26:11you're using Gen AI, do you think that is?
- 26:15Yeah, no, no, that's like we had that percent.
- 26:16So I think this is a great era because I think the the Lambs
- 26:20are also making decision near job easier on some aspect.
- 26:25So I'll take also like ingesting the alright, so imagine that you
- 26:29have a lot of content and previously like just to give you
- 26:34for example on like on a like for his upper bags and shoes, we
- 26:40work a lot of scanned documents and PDFs.
- 26:43So I think previously to go and get the exactly the data that we
- 26:47need that PDF you had to draw a metrics and pinpoint the pixels
- 26:53on which to get that data. I think it has evolved with time
- 26:57with natural language processing, but I think now it's
- 27:01as easy. Of course with the right guard
- 27:03was as easy as plugging in the PDF with the different methods
- 27:07and as I told them to get the insight or summarise or get what
- 27:12the value that you want, right. So I think that's the data
- 27:14ingestion. I think #2 which is that it just
- 27:17cataloguing, right? So basically enterprises, they
- 27:22have a huge data catalogue and in order to navigate it and to
- 27:26figure out what table goes where to join, how to join.
- 27:30I've seen a client also experimenting with like instead
- 27:37of yeah as you said, like writing a query in natural
- 27:41language like say hey give me the last 10 elements sold in
- 27:46this branch in that area. And basically for new users, for
- 27:52users who don't know how to write the SQL either needs help
- 27:55and needs support. I think the system can help tell
- 27:58you which tables to look at or even help you create the query
- 28:03or get you the value. Either of that data.
- 28:06I think we also like tagging data or showing you where
- 28:13there's a potential data quality issue.
- 28:15I've seen, I've seen some general, we have little Quantum
- 28:19Black, a tool that basically help you look at the table or
- 28:24multiple tables until you where are the potential data quality
- 28:28issues and to try to help you fix them traffic also the the
- 28:35lineage, right. So I think also data elements
- 28:39can help you find out where the data is coming from, right.
- 28:44So I think look, I think it's a pleasure to be live in this year
- 28:50right now to see that basically engineer can also have the
- 28:54engineers move faster. I don't think better them can do
- 29:00all that decision hear does or can be basically replace right,
- 29:05if this is the right word. No, I think, I think it will
- 29:08help support. It's not Accelerate, it will
- 29:11help materialise the work of decision here quicker.
- 29:16And maybe another thing to add here is Ohh element model.
- 29:21They take no for an answer. They always have an answer for
- 29:24you. It can hallucinate and give you
- 29:26some answers that you might not even which is not even true.
- 29:29Maybe the data does not even exist.
- 29:31But I'll give you an answer. So you have to be very careful.
- 29:34You can't just say blind, you can go ahead as it has mentioned
- 29:36and it's not going to replace you.
- 29:38And of course the guardrails and regulations are in place which
- 29:42can you can use where the data needs to go.
- 29:44Where is the LLM hosted? They're going to be important
- 29:47comments anywhere. Yeah, I I was thinking about
- 29:50something along the lines of, but it feels like a lot of times
- 29:54potentially you don't necessarily need an LM for this.
- 29:59And I think these days it's it's easy to be like, ohh, yeah,
- 30:03let's throw some AI at it. And you know, it's like you do
- 30:08you need a I for that? Because I was thinking, ohh,
- 30:10yeah, well, what about if you could figure out like the how
- 30:14the data has been transformed and the provenance of the data?
- 30:17And then I was thinking about it a little more and I was like,
- 30:19you don't need AI for that. So I'm going to change gears a
- 30:22little bit because we were talking about PPI a little bit
- 30:24and tagging that. What do we feel like when it
- 30:30comes to LM and working with LM's from the data engineering
- 30:34side? How do you think about PII and
- 30:38data privacy? I know we've, we've spoken a lot
- 30:41on this podcast about how you really have to be conscientious
- 30:48of where you're sending the data, especially if it's just
- 30:50going out to ChatGPT and how ChatGPT is is using that data,
- 30:55even if they say they're not using it.
- 30:58I was just reading a paper actually a little while ago last
- 31:03week from these folks out of university in Prague, and they
- 31:08were talking about how all of the different large APIs leak
- 31:13the data into some way shape or form.
- 31:17They're leaking that data, so you can't.
- 31:19Even if they say that they're like bulletproof, it doesn't
- 31:22matter because it's being leaked and so you can't really trust
- 31:26it. How do you look at data privacy
- 31:29and PII in this new paradigm of large language models?
- 31:33So in terms of privacy, right, it is the data that you have
- 31:37within your company, you can control it.
- 31:38So one, I always have this question for my clients whenever
- 31:42we are building applications or anything, right?
- 31:44Do you really need to feed in the actual PII data into your
- 31:47model? And 9095% of the times it's no,
- 31:51you can anonymize it. You don't have to send a
- 31:54customer ID or a customer number of bank card details, right?
- 31:57You can anonymize it, need that information in your model and
- 31:59that's where you can use it. So I think it's always about
- 32:04before you even use them. And rather than throwing all the
- 32:06information to the model itself, take a step back and think, do
- 32:09you really need to feed in the sensitive data in the 1st place.
- 32:12So majority of the times you what you would typically do is
- 32:16you anonymize the data altogether, so you don't even
- 32:19send that data in in that particular sense in the 1st
- 32:22place. So you do that tokenization,
- 32:24anonymization or hashing or whatever which is going to be
- 32:27the most secure mechanism. Ohh for this depending on the
- 32:30type of data that you're gonna put in Ohh that's going to be
- 32:33the point. Number one, you don't send the
- 32:35data in the 1st place and do those guardrails altogether
- 32:38while making a call but five personally we still need to send
- 32:41that data and so on and so make sure where is your LLM hosted
- 32:45like now you can also have country specific right?
- 32:48You may be data from 1 country doesn't need to go to an LLM.
- 32:52Think about where that that LLM is hosted, where the data is,
- 32:56where it's going to be going and also ensuring the authorization,
- 32:59the excess of that. At the end of the day like
- 33:02application does not have flexibility that it can download
- 33:05all the data altogether. So you also take care of that
- 33:07authorization aspect which we have not talked about yet, but
- 33:10access management to ensure that only a certain set of people
- 33:13have access to that set of data if required.
- 33:17No effect. Also whenever there is something
- 33:20new, a lot of people are worried about it, right?
- 33:24So I think with with the recent McKinsey like resources that we
- 33:31have done a lot of the companies we have discussed with like OHH
- 33:36thinking like more than 70% of thinking that Junior right has
- 33:39introduced or will introduce some data risk, right.
- 33:44So that needs to be considered right.
- 33:46So I think this is the same story all over again like when
- 33:49we had cloud and everybody was saying hey, how can I be sure
- 33:52that my data is going to be seen by somebody else or my data is
- 33:56not leaving or is it secure. So I think we need, it's a
- 34:01maturity level that enterprise will basically give a trust or
- 34:06trust that process. But I think go in there, there
- 34:11are a lot of different like archetypes or different
- 34:16solutions that at least my clients are looking at beautiful
- 34:21banking rates. So I think as Andrew said,
- 34:23there's one we don't really need to send anonymized data to the
- 34:27other them because basically you can put all the our property
- 34:31data into a vector database that is hosted within our premises
- 34:36and will use the Genai within them just to interact and
- 34:40retrieve that data, right. So, and even though the
- 34:43retrieval of that data, we can make sure that on the vector
- 34:46database, we don't have any pussy, right and we use the
- 34:49context, what we use the client information audio on the front
- 34:54end. So that's I think one of the
- 34:56series anonymized data #2. There's potentially also hosted.
- 35:01And so I think now with the introduction of Michael and Lamb
- 35:06and many offline Adams, a lot of enterprises are testing.
- 35:12Of course, I think there's always the question about the
- 35:16GPU or the accuracy versus the the leaders on the market, but
- 35:21for some applications they are. I think there's no question that
- 35:24the data will leave the premises of the company.
- 35:28And I think there are also this affected the third bit with
- 35:32which is a bit the, the, the, the hybrid approach to as as I
- 35:35said previously which like 11 is for just interaction, but the
- 35:40data is hosted 100% within the premises of the of the
- 35:45enterprise, right. So I think there's different
- 35:47archetypes, many players, artists and different things.
- 35:52But I agree with you that it's a maturity level.
- 35:55I think as we have gone through this with the cloud where nobody
- 35:59is trusted to send data elsewhere, now it's more like
- 36:05everybody uses the cloud, right. So I think, yeah, yeah, I think
- 36:09somebody tweeting level, we need to get into good time.
- 36:13Yeah, that's an interesting point where you draw the
- 36:17parallel between the cloud. And I can see how back in the
- 36:20day, people were very afraid of saying, like, wait a minute, I'm
- 36:24going to go and I'm going to take everything that I own and
- 36:28just give it to somebody else. And you're going to assure me
- 36:31that it's all gonna be OK. And what kind of assurances can
- 36:35you make that it's just going to be OK You're just going to give
- 36:37me your word on that one? OK Yeah.
- 36:39And I'm. I'm going to go and spend a lot
- 36:41of money to do that. Let me see about that.
- 36:44So there there does feel like it and there are some parallels.
- 36:49It feels a little bit different though, because we don't really
- 36:53know what the LM's are doing. We don't really understand
- 36:57what's going on. Yeah, it's a little bit more
- 37:00like, OK, I can open a I can tell me that they're going to do
- 37:04everything in their power to make sure that nothing happens,
- 37:08right? But then until we fully
- 37:10understand the idea of what is actually happening in the LM and
- 37:15if anything is going on behind the scenes, then I I think we, I
- 37:23I feel like people will still be more hesitant and it is more of
- 37:26that maturity level that you're talking about in us.
- 37:28Like we're going to over the next couple years.
- 37:31We're going to be able to see where things fall short and then
- 37:36we're going to be able to create whatever we need to create to
- 37:40make sure that everyone is very, very confident and we can put in
- 37:45our little sock 2 compliance. That even though I'm using this
- 37:49API, it everything is still all good.
- 37:52I still conform to my sock too, and it's it's all kosher, right?
- 37:58So thinking about this whole idea of how do we move fast, How
- 38:05do we take advantage of this technology that's out there.
- 38:09But at the same time, like how do we not shoot ourselves in the
- 38:12foot and be one of those companies that is in the news
- 38:17for having a gaff or selling a car for $1.00 or talking bad
- 38:23about its own company, all those different ones and us that I
- 38:27know you, it's funny, you don't even have to tell me which one
- 38:30you are referencing. I can just like think of three
- 38:33or four because every week a new one comes up and it's it's like,
- 38:38ohh yeah, those poor folks, they just tried to run fast and it
- 38:43ended up shooting themselves in the foot.
- 38:45So how do you all think about like balancing that innovation
- 38:49and trying to make things work with these LM's but at the same
- 38:55time having this data protection and having these guardrails in
- 38:58place and and maybe it's that you're thinking, OK, well maybe
- 39:04for very high stakes stuff it's off limits.
- 39:08Or maybe we try and just do things internally in the
- 39:13beginning and until we see that we have enough reps internally,
- 39:17then we can bring it to the external world.
- 39:19Even though as soon as you put something external, you know
- 39:23it's gonna be like there's so many more malicious actors just
- 39:26because they want to have something to post on Twitter for
- 39:29no other reason than that they wanna be like look at what this
- 39:31chat bot told me. So how do you all think about
- 39:34that? Like that balance right there?
- 39:37Look up, I think that the different ways you can do that.
- 39:41So I can talk about examples of some companies or what they have
- 39:46done. So I think one approach was to
- 39:49say, hey, this is a new technology.
- 39:52This is moving really fast and we don't know how much it's
- 39:56going to cost us down the line. We don't know like how much the
- 39:59value will be. So that's the one thing.
- 40:02Let's take the use cases. Let's privatise them.
- 40:07By values, what will be the impact by feasibility?
- 40:11With feasibility we have also the risk, right?
- 40:13And I think when you do that exercise, most of the time, like
- 40:18at least some of the bank's banking clients I'm working
- 40:22with, we try to do something either internally, right.
- 40:26So let's say it's hour chat box that we used to ask questions
- 40:34like how many days do I have leave a year.
- 40:37And you limit a bit intent, right?
- 40:39You start with the intent, you limit it, and then you expand it
- 40:43but with the control, with the control environment.
- 40:49I think the other way to do it is basically to to launch a
- 40:55product with a limited set of users just a bit, fail fast and
- 41:01then build build upon it until Because I think there are
- 41:05probably 3 things you need to guarantee. #1 is that you
- 41:09basically know that this would provide value to you.
- 41:13So number one you to validate the value.
- 41:15Two you need to validate that you master the technology and
- 41:18you can basically specify the intent, how the guardrails and
- 41:23make sure that the output is clean.
- 41:26The top bit is also to master the costs because I think a lot
- 41:31of times we say that the general I will help views a bit the
- 41:35costs of doing XY&Z but I think we need to a lot of companies
- 41:41need to prove that right. So I think a lot of especially
- 41:45the backlights I'm working with even though many banks have
- 41:49launched some chat box, but if you go there, it's see there you
- 41:53can see the it's either they started previously with the
- 41:57internal beasts and they visited the the technology and the risks
- 42:02too. They have launched this
- 42:04previously but less limited set of customers so they can test or
- 42:09potentially all potentially. What they have done now is that
- 42:16they really limited the the, the intents of what they launch
- 42:21online to some specific actions, right.
- 42:24But of course I think one important piece is is anyhow you
- 42:29need other than putting the gather rails, is that you need
- 42:33to add some human touch in the end to validate a little bit
- 42:37some of the outputs, right? Because I don't think everything
- 42:43it shouldn't go out and should be autonomous right?
- 42:45I think they should be a lot of control over the outputs at
- 42:49least for the for the maturity level.
- 42:51Well, here we are in within this couple of years.
- 42:55Yeah, adding to the points that industry just mentioned, right,
- 42:59like summarising in the context of these three things, right,
- 43:02your privacy, quality and access like this is going to be very
- 43:06important guardrails that you have to apply.
- 43:08Things are still evolving. I'm not saying we are there
- 43:11there yet, but still these three components, depending on your
- 43:14the risk factor of your application, you make sure that
- 43:17your quality, privacy and access is taken care of.
- 43:21I think that's where you will help as a client or as a
- 43:25customer can help a little more in going in that journey.
- 43:28Other thing of course is a country regulations we are
- 43:30coming up like European AI act, right.
- 43:32Other countries are also going to come up with those
- 43:35regulations, which is going to drill down on the list of things
- 43:38that an application need to be careful with.
- 43:40That is going to be similar to what we had for GDPR earlier,
- 43:43right on the AI application that's going to be also the
- 43:46guard rails that will be enforced at the country level.
- 43:49But as of now if you don't have those things, make sure that
- 43:52based on how the risk factor for application is, you take care of
- 43:55the privacy fixes and overall your ohh this these three
- 44:02components that I talked about here.
- 44:05Yeah, it feels like there's almost, so I really like that.
- 44:08It's like a a matrix of the risk factors, costs and how easy it
- 44:17will be to implement so that you can recognise.
- 44:21Should we be putting this or should we be spending our time
- 44:24on this first of all and Next up like if we do decide to spend
- 44:29our time on it, what's the likelihood of success here?
- 44:32And then also having those feature flags in place so that
- 44:36you can quickly test it with a small group and if it gets out
- 44:39of hand with a small batch size of 100 people, you can recognise
- 44:45that. Definitely not gonna be showing
- 44:46this to 100,000 people like let's go back and see and and
- 44:50also and then limiting that ability of what it can do and
- 44:54putting those guardrails on on the front end.
- 44:56So how the person that's interacting with that in this
- 45:00case the HR chat bot, how that person can speak to the HR
- 45:04chatbot and then what the output of the HR chat chat bot is too.
- 45:07So you can't say, hey give me my my holidays package in a poem in
- 45:15the style of, you know, Bob Dylan or something, which would
- 45:20be great, but it's like ohh, do we need, do we need that right
- 45:23now? The other piece that I thought
- 45:25was interesting that you mentioned in US and I'd love to
- 45:27dig into this a little bit more, is like people feel like when
- 45:32you implement LM, it's going to reduce the cost a lot of the
- 45:35time, but it's not always a given that thing the cost will
- 45:41go down. So can you explain that a bit
- 45:44more and? No, no, very good.
- 45:45So I think while while to say by that is that basically if we
- 45:50choose case and we have seen a lot of risk cases whose engineer
- 45:54I you need to you need to understand what is delivery you
- 45:58are trying to optimise. Is it basically tried to serve
- 46:02millions of clients and is it to retrieve information quickly or
- 46:08is it something else? What's the leave we are trying
- 46:10to optimise? I basically for each of these
- 46:12use cases we need to get a dollar value, right?
- 46:16But because each of these, and I'm talking about the
- 46:20enterprise, about the back, about insurance, in order to get
- 46:23this into production and answering the questions about
- 46:26privacy, regulations, all of it, it's going to cost money, right?
- 46:30So I think before you get into something that costs a lot of
- 46:36money, you need to understand what's the value of each use
- 46:39case, what is the feasibility and then to take what is has the
- 46:44highest they do and a highly feasible with less risk, right.
- 46:48And you start with that, you try to pilot it, you launch it, you
- 46:54get the value out of it and then you understand you will
- 46:57basically master the cost. You understand how much it's
- 47:01costing you. Because I think a lot of people
- 47:04now are looking at the build they receive from Julianne
- 47:08asking questions to if we also need your people to be trained
- 47:15on how to through this use cases.
- 47:17So I think within that you guarantee that you are limiting
- 47:21the risk, you are getting value and at the same time learning
- 47:25how to do more complex, more high stake use cases.
- 47:29So I think for me this is critical because I think, I
- 47:32mean, I always like to go back as a model.
- 47:35I like to go back into history and to see where companies have
- 47:39filled in the past where they say, hey, we have this machine
- 47:42learning, OK, machine learning, let's build a model that's gonna
- 47:47do this, finds it, and then they go, they build it.
- 47:50There's no uptake from business because where's the value,
- 47:53right. So I think now with the hype, a
- 47:57lot of companies are trying to build a new things.
- 48:01So for example, on that example, I was telling you about a
- 48:04company trying to build layer that's going to generate a SQL
- 48:10query for you, understanding the data catalogue and the data.
- 48:14I think the company has spent a lot of money to do it, but now
- 48:18data management companies are offering that on top of their
- 48:22database, on top of their databases, right.
- 48:26So now it's becoming, so you invest a lot of money, but a lot
- 48:30of companies are offering that off the shelf, right?
- 48:32So I think starting. If a company wants to start
- 48:35tomorrow, they need to look at all the laundry lists of use
- 48:41cases. What is the?
- 48:42Never tried to put a dollar value into each 1A feasibility,
- 48:47prioritise biometrics and then go ahead by the highest value.
- 48:51High visibility right test it, see the value of it, see if
- 48:56there's any uptick from business and then skip from there.
- 49:00God, that's so right, man. And that's so, so hard to do on
- 49:04that strategy part to think about.
- 49:07I could spend a lot of time and effort creating this because
- 49:13it's not on the market right now or I could wait six months and
- 49:17see if it's going to be on the market because I'm probably not
- 49:22the only one thinking about this.
- 49:23And so that question right there, it just, it eats at me so
- 49:29much considering that you have to have like this crystal ball
- 49:37where you have to recognise like her, OK, we could go and spend a
- 49:41lot of time and energy in this or we could just wait and what
- 49:45are you gonna just wait on? And then in six months, what if
- 49:48it's still not there and you say, you know what, we waited
- 49:50six months, it's still not here. And then in another six months
- 49:53it is there. And so you're like, dah, weird.
- 49:58But so that is is so hard. So anybody out there that's
- 50:01making those kind of decisions, I have a lot of respect for
- 50:04them. Yeah.
- 50:06And yeah, I I I heard one example like there was somewhere
- 50:09I read where people were talking about if I can just message chat
- 50:13in a video gets created out of it.
- 50:15So a lot of ideas are being thrown like that in the market,
- 50:17which is like I just explained. And then I get a complete video
- 50:20for three minutes 4 minutes on the topic.
- 50:23I think this has been lost a couple of days ago, right.
- 50:25Is it? Yeah.
- 50:26Yeah. See the things are moving.
- 50:29Yeah. Exactly.
- 50:30Yeah. Yeah.
- 50:31Soon enough that'll be a reality.
- 50:34And that's so wild to think about.
- 50:35The wild. So this is incredible.
- 50:38Well folks, I am so thankful that you came on here and you
- 50:43were chatting with me all about the data engineering aspects of
- 50:47this LM world, and it's always a pleasure to get to catch up with
- 50:52smart people like yourselves. Thank you very much.
- 50:54Dimitri is a pleasure.