ChatGPT — Is the role of a Data Scientist already obsolete?
No doubt that title has attracted the attention of all data scientists out there! Before you shoot me down in flames, rest easy, it’s not dead, but this is a real world question that needs some serious discussion and here’s why:
The premise of any AI product, and in particular, Open AI’s latest products is to replace human effort spent on tasks, with intelligent technology. In the data space, use cases for this AI tech in the future will no doubt be looking to replace manual effort across the board. More specifically, I see some low hanging fruit in data engineering as well as data reporting and analysis tasks where AI can take over.
As a data professional myself and someone who employs staff. I can safely say without doubt, that as the technology allows it, any business will adopt a tech solution to replace a human where it makes fiscal, business and technological sense to do so. I’m not alone in this thinking, this approach has been in practice across history from the stone age until now and data is not immune to it.
What does this mean?
With the above in mind, It would be prudent for everyone in the data world to start thinking about what the future workforce capability and need may look like as these AI products evolve over time.
For all of the data specialists out there. In my view, easy pickings for AI tech will be around the bread and butter style data analysis and reporting/visualisations for executive style reports. Adopting AI tech to undertake analysis of a data set, identify anomalies (& correct them), extract useful tidbits for reporting on, and then tidy it up into a nicely written report for sending onto a human for quality checking, isn’t too far off being the norm, in my view anyway.
Similarly, in data engineering, development and maintenance of pipelines to move data around and transform it, is an obvious space where AI could be trained to replace a significant amount of what is currently manual effort.
But AI has been around for a long time?!
I can already hear you saying but AI is already being used in these areas! There are certainly use cases and here’s a good article on the topic of AI in data engineering. However, in reality, it’s all still in it’s infancy and there’s relatively low up take of major AI undertakings, that significantly reduce workforce requirements across industry to-date. The next evolution of AI such as OpenAI’s tools will, (again in my view) open pandora’s box and elevate AI tech up to a whole new level.
What does this mean for you?
What does this mean for all of the up coming data professionals out there? My suggestion is not to rest on your laurels! Your jobs are going to evolve and you need to ensure you evolve with them. The data related tasks that are low hanging fruit, likely will be replaced with AI tech in the future.
More importantly, don’t get trapped into thinking you have a job for life doing what you’re doing, the way you’re doing it now. I can assure you, what I do now and how I do it, compared to 28yrs ago when I finished school looks very different. That period of evolution felt rapid (think Windows 95 released the same year and most small to medium business still did everything on paper and calculators!) but it is nothing compared to what the next phase of evolution will look like.
In Summary
Getting back to my inital question. Is the role of a data scientist obsolete? In my view, certainly in my work lifetime, I see there will always be a need for the higher level intelligence, interpretation and thought process that a human can apply as a data scientist or any other data professional. However, as noted above, whether you’re a data scientist, analyst, engineer, architect or whatever you label yourself as. Expect your job role to change and the demand for hard technical skills such as coding to likely diminish. I suggest to anyone following a technical career, put as much focus on developing your strategic thinking and other soft skills as you do on your hard skills. That will allow you to cross the bridge between technical and corporate. This is where I see the highest demand for us technical minded humans in the future.
*The above is my opinion based on what I see transpiring in AI tech and the data space and is intended as a conversation starter only. This article should not be used as a definitive assessment of the future landscape and career prospects. Do your due dillence and make decisions on your career based on where you think the world is heading and most importantly… what you want to do.
