A semantic layer is something we use every day. We build dashboards with yearly and monthly aggregations. We design dimensions for drilling down reports by region, product, or whatever metrics we are interested in. What has changed is that we no longer use a singular business intelligence tool; different teams use different visualizations (BI, notebooks, and embedded analytics).
https://airbyte.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-
semantic-layer-metrics-on-the-fly