When LLMs Write the Database: Code Generation, Semantic SQL, and the Cost of AI Operators with Immanuel Trummer

Immanuel Trummer is a professor at Cornell University working where database systems meet large language models. He started on this before ChatGPT, back when every talk needed a ten-minute explanation of what a language model was.
In this episode, Immanuel walks Kostas and Nitay through three waves of that work. First, LLMs that read manuals and forum posts to tune database knobs. Then agents that write the query engine itself: GenDB generates C code specialized to your queries, data, and hardware, and can beat highly optimized traditional systems by a multiple. Finally, semantic SQL, where…