Data Cleaning is the New Coding

Everyone wants the "Magic Button." They want to point an AI agent at their shared drive and ask, "Where are we losing money?"

The AI will fail. Not because the model is dumb, but because your data is messy.

Garbage In, Halucination Out

In traditional software, bad data causes errors. In AI, bad data causes lies. If you have three files named Q3_Forecast_Final.xlsx, Q3_Forecast_Final_v2.xlsx, and Q3_Forecast_REAL.xlsx, the AI doesn't know which one is truth. It will guess.

The Unsexy Work

The highest ROI activity for 2025 isn't "building a custom LLM." It is organizing your information architecture.

1. Naming Conventions: Enforce them strictly.
2. Versioning: Use systems, not filenames.
3. Context: Add metadata tags to documents.

The New Literacy

If "coding" was the skill of the 2010s, "data hygiene" is the skill of the late 2020s. The companies with the cleanest data will have the smartest agents. The messy ones will just have faster hallucinations.