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Episode 159:

What Is a Vector Database? Featuring Bob van Luijt of Weaviate

October 11, 2023

This week on The Data Stack Show, Eric and Kostas chat with Bob van Luijt, the CEO & Co-Founder at Weaviate. During the episode, Bob discusses the technical and business aspects of vector databases, delving into their differences from other types of databases and the opportunities they present. Bob shares his journey and how his love for music relates to his work in machine learning. The conversation also covers the progression of database complexity and the emergence of databases designed for specific data types, limitations of existing databases for vector processing, the importance of simplicity and user-friendliness in the user experience, generative feedback loops, and more.

Notes:

Highlights from this week’s conversation include:

  • How music impacted Bob’s data journey (3:16)
  • Music’s relationship with creativity and innovation (11:38)
  • The genesis of Weaviate and the idea of vector databases (14:09)
  • The joy of creation (19:02)
  • OLAP Databases (22:21)
  • The progression of complexity in databases (24:31)
  • Vector database (29:23)
  • Scaling suboptimal algorithms (34:34)
  • The future of vector space representation (35:51)
  • Databases role in different industries (39:14)
  • The brute force approach to discovery (45:57)
  • Retrieval augmented generation (51:26)
  • How generative model interacts with the database (57:55)
  • Final thoughts and takeaways (1:03:20)

The Data Stack Show is a weekly podcast powered by RudderStack, the CDP for developers. 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.

About the Podcast

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.

To keep up to date with our future episodes, subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or the player of your choice.

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