RE: Microsoft Copilot and IBM i DB2 SQL

Hallucinating or coming to bizarre conclusions is common with so-called "Artificial Intelligence." There's nothing intelligence about it. It's simply pattern recognition and data analysis. Yes, at a very fast and high level. It lacks general intelligence and simple common sense.

My favorite example is the car wash test https://cybernews.com/ai-news/ai-car-wash-test/ where he asks if he should walk or drive to the car wash. To a human, the answer is obvious, but "AI" struggles with the crux of the question.

Someday we may get more consistent results--and even today, we often get good results. But until a better awareness is achieved, "AI" will at times fall way short.

Thanks,
Michael Quigley
Computer Services
www.TheWay.org

-----Original Message-----
message: 4
date: Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:19:36 +0100
from: Daniel Gross <daniel@xxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: Microsoft Copilot and IBM i DB2 SQL

?
Hi Dan,

this is not a problem of CoPilot - even IBM Bob is very often hallucinating the
weirdest things.

A few days ago, it insisted that there is a function, that simply doesn't exist
on Db2 for i - and ist even insisted, that Db2 would accept columns in the
SELECT clause that are neither in the GROUP BY nor a aggregate function.
And yes, this is possible with some SQL engines (AFAIK PostgreSQL has this) -
but Db2 doesn't support it.

I had to tell Bob 2 times, that he is wrong before he tried to correct it - for the
hallucinated function he didn't find a solution.

So - everything from AI is consummated best with extreme caution - even as
IBM Bob is quite good most of the times.

HTH and kind regards,
Daniel

Am 18.03.2026 um 16:58 schrieb Dan Bale via MIDRANGE-L <midrange-

l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

?Is anyone using Microsoft Copilot to *assist* with creating IBM i DB2 SQL

queries, procedures, and functions? Or, have given up?

Within the past two days, Copilot has been an absolute mess, insisting that

"system rules required that it search for publicly available information" and
"missing citations, blah, blah, blah". I just now realized that I forgot to start
off the new chat with my standard "IBM i DB2 SQL only" prompt, so I asked
Copilot if this missing prompt (which I included in my message) was the
reason why it went off the rails. Copilot agreed and suggested a modified
prompt . . . .

. . . .
. . . .
. . . .