But when it comes to web conversion or analytics I think it's far-fetched to presume AI is coming after the data analyst's job.

The real analysts anyway.

Most people now refer to AI mean ChatGPT or other LLMs and think that combining these will lead to insight generation.

This they say will lead to data analysts losing their job.

Firstly, I don't trust anything AI writes is true until I've fact-checked it.

I'd be doing the same with any suggestion offered by some kind of analysis plugin.

But even if the text generated from data that one of these AIs put out was helpful, there is one very important thing that AI lacks.

Curiosity as part of the business context.

You may have AI replace what Avinash Kaushik coined as "reporting squirrels" back in the day.

Meaning if poor engagement is happening somewhere on a website or an ad campaign AI could tell you what is happening and make some suggestions based on the data.

But as yet I've never seen an AI model dig deep enough or be curious enough based on business goals to provide a wider contextual remark that is a true insight.

We still have to do that ourselves.

I don't think AI will ever truly replace things like curiosity or creativity.

What it will do is speed up analysis by finding anomalies and making basic suggestions.

But for the smart data analyst, this should be the starting point of further digging and connecting the dots.

So I don't think the data analyst has much to worry about.

The reporting squirrels however may be on the verge of a mass extinction event.

To be honest, though, that kind of people need to up their game anyway.

What I do see happening is that the best analysts will become better, faster and more efficient by using AI.

We work better together.