Doug Finke on PowerShell, AI, and the future of Small Language Models

In this episode, Doug shares his preference for composition over inheritance in object-oriented programming and his strategic use of design patterns in Visual Basic consulting. He challenges commonly held beliefs about language performance and productivity, arguing that faster languages do not always yield faster results. The conversation also explores the offline benefits of large and small language models (LLMs and SLMs) and highlights Doug's innovative use of PowerShell to create autonomous agents.

Doug shares fascinating insights on prompt engineering, the evolution of AI models, and the potential of personal AI as the next technological inflection point. Despite facing resistance from critics and the tech community, Doug remains a staunch advocate for leveraging cutting-edge tools and maintaining an unscripted, adaptive approach to technology.

Show Notes

Time Stamps

07:32 Discovering GPT chat and its incredible capabilities.

14:25 Expect announcement at OpenAI Day in November.

19:41 Initial confusion, but eventually realized cross-platform potential.

25:31 Colleague makes fun of me, but impressed.

30:07 Experience of being a non-traditional engineer.

35:10 Prefer using PowerShell over Python for coding.

40:36 Discussing hallucination problem and algorithms in AI.

43:19 Using AI to generate better function names.

47:46 "Creating forms quickly with impressive results."

54:58 Recall story of new guy at whiskey distillery.

01:01:06 Microsoft focuses on smaller, efficient language models.

01:08:12 Data-driven podcast explores PowerShell and AI's fusion.

Links

• PSAI (PowerShell AI module): https://github.com/dfinke/PSAI
• PSWeave (PowerShell module bringing OpenAI's GPT): https://github.com/dfinke/PSWeave
• ImportExcel (PowerShell module to import/export Excel spreadsheets): https://github.com/dfinke/ImportExcel
• New York PowerShell Meetup: Meetup https://www.meetup.com/nycpowershellmeetup/