8 | | DECEMBER 2025AI AND THE DATA CONTRADICTIONS OF OUR TIMESBy Roberto Franceschini, Director, Commercial Analytics and Insights, SpinriteIN MY OPINIONWho is going to argue that artificial intelligence (AI) is, by far, the hottest topic in the tech and data analytics industries and maybe one of the overall trending topics worldwide?Some people are more into tech and technological changes than others. If there were a scale to measure how much someone is conservative or enthusiastic about technological changes, I would be closer to the middle towards the enthusiastic side. Although I am not the most avid for technological changes, I can say that AI has already changed my professional and personal lives positively.All this to say that what is next could sound like I am an anti-AI type of guy, which is not the case. I am just a data analytics professional who has been in the industry for almost 20 years. What is going to be shared is just the result of observation over all those years. The following few paragraphs are a collection of thoughts, the fruit of years working for multiple companies in multiple industries, doing consulting, being a professor in the field, and, of course, networking and exchanging experiences with colleagues around the world.But if AI is that much of a trending topic and has started changing, in a good way, people's and professionals' lives, where are the contradictions mentioned in this article's title?They reside in the fact that while companies are discussing how to leverage AI, some old historical data struggles did not go anywhere, and these are being traded-off for AI, which is where decision makers have more willingness to invest ­ here thought, but traditional business intelligence projects, focused on building data warehouses, and reporting/dashboarding platforms, have cost very much for organizations and, at many times, failed. There might be erroneous conclusions that this type of project Roberto Franceschini
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