Hey, have you seen the Microsoft paper that’s been making waves lately? As a data scientist, I was curious to dive in and see what all the fuss is about. After reading it, I came away feeling pretty relieved – and I think you will too.
The paper lists various jobs that are supposedly at risk of being replaced by AI, and data science is one of them. But when you dig deeper, it’s clear that the jobs on the list are mostly ones that involve writing reports and gathering information – tasks that AI is indeed good at.
If you look at the chart in the paper, you’ll see that ‘Gathering Information’ is the clear winner in terms of activities done by AI, while ‘Analyzing Data’ is much less impacted. And even in that case, it’s often people asking AI to help with analysis, not AI doing it on its own.
So, what does this mean for data scientists? In my opinion, not much. The core of our job – analyzing data, identifying patterns, and making recommendations – is still very much in our hands. The tasks that AI is good at are actually ones that we might be happy to hand off anyway.
Of course, it’s always good to stay vigilant and keep an eye on how AI is evolving. But for now, I think we can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Data science is safe – for the time being, at least!