Olaf de Senerpont Domis

DataStax is blessed with many talented writers, so it&rsquo;s no surprise that we churned out literally hundreds of articles and blog posts over the past 12 months. Even we have a hard time keeping track sometimes; in case you did, too, we looked back over the 2023 and highlighted some of the most popular and helpful pieces of the year. Enjoy!
<h2>Can I Ask You a Question? Building a Taylor Swift Chatbot with the Astra DB Vector Database</h2>
To celebrate Taylor Swift&rsquo;s birthday, the cadre of &ldquo;Swifties&rdquo; at DataStax concocted a plan to build a chatbot that could answer questions about their favorite artist. <a href="https://www.datastax.com/blog/using-astradb-vector-to-build-taylor-swift-chatbot">Take a deep-dive</a> into how we used Next.js, LangChain.js, Cohere, OpenAI, and DataStax Astra DB to build SwiftieGPT.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h2>Cassandra 5.0: What Do the Developers Who Built It Think?</h2>
A brilliant, distributed team that hails from the likes of Apple, Netflix, and DataStax work tirelessly toward a single goal: improving Apache Cassandra. Those who earn the trust of the Cassandra open source community and can make changes to the base code are called &ldquo;committers.&rdquo; <a href="https://thenewstack.io/cassandra-5-0-what-do-the-developers-who-built-it-think/">Here&rsquo;s what a handful of them had to say about the upcoming Cassandra 5.0 GA.</a>
<h2>Why Your CEO Needs to Watch a Coding Video</h2>
Business leaders probably don&rsquo;t need to know Python. But they do need to understand how simple it is to unlock the power of <a title="What is Generative AI" href="https://www.datastax.com/guides/what-is-generative-ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">generative AI</a>. Watching an instructional video by someone like developer and coding instructor Ania Kubow is a perfect way to absorb a key message: every developer has what they need, right now, to build GenAi apps. <a href="https://www.cio.com/article/652244/why-your-ceo-needs-to-watch-a-coding-video.html">Read about it in CIO.com.</a>
<h2>5 Hard Problems in Vector Search and How Cassandra Solves Them</h2>
<a title="What is Vector Search" href="https://www.datastax.com/guides/what-is-vector-search" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vector search</a> is a database feature that&rsquo;s critical for GenAI applications, but it comes with multiple architectural challenges, including scale-out, garbage collection, concurrency, effective use of disk, and composability. <a href="https://thenewstack.io/5-hard-problems-in-vector-search-and-how-cassandra-solves-them">Here&rsquo;s how DataStax approached solving these issues in Astra DB.</a>
<h2>Fine Tuning Isn&rsquo;t the Hammer for Every Generative AI Nail</h2>
There are two ways to get information into an <a title="What is a LLM" href="https://www.datastax.com/guides/what-is-a-large-language-model" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LLM</a> to help prevent &ldquo;hallucinations&rdquo; and ensure that the model provides accurate, relevant answers: train the model with the data, either when the model is built or by &ldquo;fine tuning&rdquo; it after the fact. Or you can do it at runtime, via a process known as <a href="https://www.datastax.com/guides/what-is-retrieval-augmented-generation?utm_source=thenewstack&amp;utm_medium=byline&amp;utm_campaign=RAG&amp;utm_term=all-plays&amp;utm_content=RAG-vs-fine-tuning">retrieval augmented generation</a> (RAG). <a href="https://thenewstack.io/fine-tuning-isnt-the-hammer-for-every-machine-learning-nail/">In this article, we discuss how to choose between fine tuning and RAG.</a>

The Top 5 DataStax Stories from 2023

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Can I Ask You a Question? Building a Taylor Swift Chatbot with the Astra DB Vector Database

Cassandra 5.0: What Do the Developers Who Built It Think?

Why Your CEO Needs to Watch a Coding Video

5 Hard Problems in Vector Search and How Cassandra Solves Them

Fine Tuning Isn't the Hammer for Every Generative AI Nail

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