Data:Scotland 2025 Takeaways – Working Together with AI

I’ve been lucky enough to attend Data:Scotland again, after having such a great time last year. This community conference is a great place to share knowledge and experience with other data and BI professionals.

The big topic this year of course is AI. It was a place to discuss:

• Where are the opportunities?
• Where are the risks?
• How can we see through the hype and deliver real value?

Opportunities

Coding Efficiency: AI is already helping us develop data solutions more efficiently, with tools such as Copilot and Cursor. It is particularly useful in reducing time spent on repetitive tasks.

Access to New Sources of Insight: With AI, data sources that were previously difficult to draw insights from (such as large numbers of documents) are becoming increasingly useful as drivers of business decisions.

Risks

The quality of what AI generates can be variable. If left without supervision, it can reduce trust in a solution, sometimes catastrophically. When integrating AI into a solution it is important to limit the scope of what the AI is allowed to do without human input.

Delivering Value

As with any other tool, AI cannot deliver an effective solution on its own. To deliver value, we need to take advantage of what AI is good at without exposing ourselves to unmitigated risk or using it for tasks it isn’t suited for. This can only be achieved with the guidance, oversight and insight of human beings. We can’t ignore AI, but the way to deliver value is to work together with it rather than giving it unrestricted freedom.