Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano | AI for data engineers with Simon Willison
August 14, 2025
It’s always a good day if you see a pelican. In Episode 30 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, open source developer Simon Willison—creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django—joins to explore how AI is useful for data engineers today. We move past the hype and boosterism to dig into example after example: structured data extraction, alt text and accessibility, safety and security (aka the fiddly bits), and why Postgres’s fine-grained permissions are such a good fit for AI-powered workflows. Also: Pulitzer-worthy data tooling, the science fiction of the 10X engineer, agents, MCP, RAG, the multitude of models, and why Simon spends so many waking hours on the jagged frontier of AI.
Source: Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano | AI for data engineers with Simon Willison
Over the last three years or so, as generative AI has had a very significant impact on the practise of software engineering, someone who’s sensible, experienced, and thoughtful writing on the topic I have followed closely is Simon Wilson.
He writes almost every day about his experiences and thoughts, and he is a frequent go-to for interviewers and as a speaker at conferences.
I recommend anything he writes or any interview he does. Here’s a recent one that you might find valuable for your next commute or dog walk.
