Semantic Models Give You (and Microsoft) the AI Upper Hand - Plus a History Lesson on Why Frontends Matter

Raw Data with Rob Collie

Back in 2010, Tableau beat smarter tools with a better demo. No brain, all charm and the market loved it. Fast-forward to now: same playbook, new costume. The AI dashboard crowd is selling "natural language BI" with zero semantic model, zero memory, and a whole lot of LinkedIn swagger. In this episode, Rob and Justin revisit why Tableau's empty-calorie approach won the first round, and how that same mistake is about to flood the AI + BI space all over again.

Turns out, you can still sell snake oil if you call it GenAI. Rob breaks down how an elite MIT course managed to skip LLMs entirely, how a flashy Tableau blog post went viral for connecting a CSV, and why "AI-ready" vendors keep duct-taping chat interfaces onto raw SQL and hoping no one looks under the hood. But the real story? Microsoft is sitting on the most powerful data brain in the game, and if they land the front end, it's game over.

This isn't just a history lesson. It's a blueprint for seeing through the hype and betting on what actually works. If you're building, buying, or betting on AI tools, listen in before you get dazzled by the demo.

Also on this episode:

Early Experiments in Tableau's New MCP Service