Select AI Concepts

Here are some concepts and terms related to Select AI.

• Actions
  
• AI Profile
  
• AI Provider
  
• Conversations
  
• Database Credential
  
• Hallucination in LLM
  
• IAM
  
• Large Language Model (LLM)
  
• Natural Language Prompts
  
• Network Access Control List (ACL)
  
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
  
• Similarity Search
  
• Vector Distances
  
• Vector Index
  
• Vector Store
  

Actions

An action in Select AI is a keyword that instructs Select AI to perform different behavior when acting on the prompt. By specifying actions, users can instruct Select AI to process their natural language prompt to generate SQL code, to respond to a chat prompt, narrate the output, display the SQL statement, or explain the SQL code, leveraging the LLMs to efficiently interact with the data within their database environment.

The following are the supported actions for Select AI:

• runsql: Displays the SQL statement for a natural language prompt and runs the underlying SQL query to return a rowset. This is the default action and does not require specifying this parameter.

• showsql: Displays the SQL statement for a natural language prompt.

• narrate: Sends the result of the SQL query run by the LLM back to the LLM to generate a natural language description of that result. This option forwards the SQL result to the AI provider to generate a natural language summary.

  When using a vector index for RAG, the system utilizes the specified transformer model to create vector embeddings for semantic similarity search against the vector store. The system then adds the retrieved content to the user prompt and sends it to the LLM to generate a response based on this information.

• chat: Generates a text response directly from the LLM based on the prompt. If conversation in the DBMS_CLOUD_AI.CREATE_PROFILE function is set to true, this option includes content from prior interactions or prompts, potentially including schema metadata.

• explainsql: Explains the generated SQL from the prompt into natural language. This option sends the generated SQL to the AI provider, which then produces a natural language explanation.

For more details on how you can use these actions, see Examples of Using Select AI.

AI Profile

An AI profile is a specification that includes the AI provider to use and other details regarding metadata and database objects required for generating responses to natural language prompts and SQL queries.

AI Provider

An AI Provider in Select AI refers to the service provider that supplies the LLMs for processing and generating responses to natural language prompts. These providers offer models that can interpret and convert natural language for the use cases highlighted under the LLM concept.

Conversations

Conversations in Select AI refer to the interactive dialogue between the user and the system, where natural language prompts are used to query or interact with the database. This conversational interface enables you to ask questions, request data, or perform actions using everyday language. Select AI interprets these prompts, interprets the user's intent, and generates corresponding SQL statements to fetch or manipulate the data and generate text responses to your natural language prompts. Conversations enable a more intuitive and accessible way to work with complex data sets, making it easier for users to extract insights and perform tasks without needing deep technical knowledge of SQL. See Profile Attributes.

Database Credential

Database Credentials are authentication credentials used to access and interact with databases. They typically consist of a user name and a password, sometimes supplemented by additional authentication factors like security tokens. These credentials are used to establish a secure connection between an application or user and a database, ensuring that only authorized individuals or systems can access and manipulate the data stored within the database.

Hallucination in LLM

Hallucination in the context of Large Language Models refers to a phenomenon where the model generates text that is incorrect, nonsensical, or unrelated to the input prompt. Despite being a result of the model's attempt to generate coherent text, these instances can contain information that is fabricated, misleading, or purely imaginative. Hallucination can occur due to biases in training data, lack of proper context understanding, or limitations in the model's training process.

IAM

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Identity and Access Management (IAM) lets you control who has access to your cloud resources. You can control what type of access a group of users have and to which specific resources. To learn more, see Overview of Identity and Access Management.

Large Language Model (LLM)

A Large Language Model (LLM) refers to an advanced type of artificial intelligence model that is trained on massive amounts of text data to support a range of use cases depending on their training data. This includes understanding and generating human-like language as well as software code and database queries. These models are capable of performing a wide range of natural language processing tasks, including text generation, translation, summarization, question answering, sentiment analysis, and more. LLMs are typically based on sophisticated deep learning neural network models that learn patterns, context, and semantics from the input data, enabling them to generate coherent and contextually relevant text.

Natural Language Prompts

Natural Language Prompts are human-readable instructions or requests provided to guide generative AI models, such as Large Language Models. Instead of using specific programming languages or commands, users can interact with these models by entering prompts in a more conversational or natural language form. The models then generate output based on the provided prompt.

Network Access Control List (ACL)

A Network Access Control List is a set of rules or permissions that define what network traffic is allowed to pass through a network device, such as a router, firewall, or gateway. ACLs are used to control and filter incoming and outgoing traffic based on various criteria such as IP addresses, port numbers, and protocols. They play a crucial role in network security by enabling administrators to manage and restrict network traffic to prevent unauthorized access, potential attacks, and data breaches.

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is a technique that involves retrieving relevant information for a user's query and supplying that information to a large language model (LLM) to improve responses and reduce hallucination.

Similarity Search

Similarity search identifies and retrieves data points that closely match a given query by comparing feature vectors in a vector store.

Vector Distances

Vector distances measure the similarity or dissimilarity between feature vectors by calculating the distance between them in a multidimensional space.

Vector Index

A vector index organizes and stores feature vectors to enable efficient similarity search and retrieval of related data.

Vector Store

A vector store includes systems that store, manage, and enable semantic similarity search involving vector embeddings. This includes standalone vector databases and Oracle Database 23ai AI Vector Search.