The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Hallucinations, Tools, and Data Wars: Inside the Minds of Data Pros

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In this bonus episode, John and Matt preview their upcoming conversation about trends in AI, the evolution of GPT modes and the ongoing debate between data warehouses and agent-based approaches.The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, customer data infrastructure that enables you to deliver real-time customer event data everywhere it’s needed to power smarter decisions and better customer experiences. Each week, we’ll talk to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists about their experience around building and maintaining data infrastructure, delivering data and data products, and driving better outcomes across their businesses with data.RudderStack helps businesses make the most out of their customer data while ensuring data privacy and security. To learn more about RudderStack visit rudderstack.com.

Welcome to the Datastack show Prequel. This is a short bonus episode where we preview the upcoming show. You'll get to meet our guest and hear about the topics we're going to cover. If they're interesting to you, you can catch the full-length show when it drops on Wednesday. Welcome back to the Datastack show. Got Matt, the cynical data guy here with us today. Matt, welcome to the show. Yo, I'm here.

Right. We're going to break from our normal. a little bit today. That may have a LinkedIn or two to share with us, but we actually have a couple topics we want to cover today, so I'm excited to jump into those. And then I think this is our first debt where we've got a cynical data guy recommendation for a good read.

It's a cynical recommendation. Stay tuned. Stay tuned for that at the end. Okay, so we're going to just launch right into AI stuff today. First topic here. I'm curious when it's going to be. comes to data or just maybe every day. What are your thoughts on GPT-5? Cynical Data guy? So mine are probably a little different because I don't need to code as much with it. But I don't

know. I, you know, you read stuff and people are like, this is the beginning of super intelligence. Read Hoffman. And then you get others that are like, it's total crap. And to me, it was, you know, it's about the same. It's a little, maybe a little bit better in some ways. It's not as sycophantic, which I appreciate, but otherwise, I don't know. I do notice that it doesn't take my instructions very well. So I'd like to know how to fix that problem. But other than that, it's not a ton different from what at least what I use it for. Yeah.

You mentioned before the show that I thought it was a fascinating response to the sycophantic, like nature, if you will. And that like some people, and I don't want to like put words in their mouth. Maybe this wasn't the reason they missed it, but it seemed like some people missed 4-0 because of the, like, personality and, like, kind of style, because they did seemingly make some stylistic choices for the default between 5 and 4-0. Yeah, any hot takes are interesting experiences when it comes to that, that stylistic change. I mean, I think probably the biggest ones are the people who love to use it for their, like, you know, the like AI girlfriend or boyfriend or, you know, there's a whole. group of people that really love the fact that it will tell them just how amazing they are.

I saw an article the other day about a guy who was having a conversation with 4-0 and was convinced he had figured out like a whole new realm of mathematics. Wow. Because 4-0 told him that he's just asking

questions others aren't comfortable with and stuff like that. What was the reality, though? Oh, the reality was it was total crap. Like, he was just making stuff. You know, it was like, it was just, I forget it had to him, but it was it was one of these, like, branching off of pie or something like that. And so he'd come up with this. He'd even given it a new name for what this thing was.

And then he went and searched for something on Google. And Gemini was like, this is an example of an LLM that tells you it tells you this is really brilliant when really there's nothing there. Yeah, that kind of burst his bubble. Yeah, it on that happens. All right. That's a wrap for the prequelion. The full-length episode will drop Wednesday morning. Subscribe now so you don't miss it.