A random meetup in Austin made me rethink my whole data cleaning process

I was at a small tech meetup there last month, mostly just to kill time. This guy from a local startup was showing how they used a new AI tool to find bad data in their customer lists. He said they cut their cleaning time from about 20 hours a week down to 3. I've been doing it all by hand for my own client records, so I tried a similar method. It's not perfect, but it flagged a bunch of duplicate addresses I would have missed. Has anyone else found a good trick for this that doesn't cost a ton?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavin_reed2mo ago

What was the name of the AI tool the Austin guy mentioned?

linda_ward2mo ago

My buddy Mark was at that meetup and he texted me about it later. He said the guy from Austin was really hyped up about a tool called "Scribe". It's supposed to help write code or something, but Mark said the demo was a bit buggy. Honestly, it sounded like another one of those things that's neat but not really ready for the shop floor.

ellis.susan1mo ago

Oh man, @linda_ward, that reminds me of something that went down with my friend Jess last month. She went to this little tech demo in her town and some dev was going on about a coding helper too. The guy tried to show it off and the thing just froze up on the first line of code. People were polite but you could feel the awkwardness in the room. Jess said it was like watching someone try to sell a car that won't start, you know? I just don't get why folks push these half-finished tools out the door instead of waiting till they actually work.