Data isn’t about empowering decisions anymore

… at least not primarily. For decades, data people (including me) used to say that the whole point of using data is to enable better and faster decisions, either inside a company or for your users.

But that has changed. It’s not just generative AI and LLMs; it’s been a slow change. I think today, data and AI aren’t about decisions alone but rather about empowering knowledge work.

You may say knowledge work at the end of the day comes down to decisions, but that’s not really true. Knowledge work isn’t called “decision work” for a reason. The main part is knowledge gathering, curating, analyzing, and then deciding.

Today, data and AI are great at many things, all of which I think are nicely wrapped inside the umbrella of knowledge work. It would be unfair to think of them as just “decision tools.”