However, an AI cannot replicate the human touch of analysts, even if the machine can process, sort, and analyze data. Data analysts can work with context, perform associative search, and sense patterns that are not as clear to an AI.
Part of a data analyst’s job is to distill complex data sets into more manageable and understandable insights, something AI can’t masterfully do to date.
Additionally, when analyzing data, data analysts can apply moral, ethical, and societal principles to the data they are looking at, which is more than AI can do. It is also worth noting that data analysts can ask questions about the data as well as its origin before analyzing it, which is not the case with AI, which always assumes that the data it receives is infallible.
As AI becomes more advanced, there is growing concern that AI will replace data analysts. It might, for some of them, but not all of the time as most decision-making theories assume.
