Money quote:
Excel requires some skill to use (to the point where high-level Excel is a competitive sport), and AI is mostly an exercise in deskilling its users and humanity at large.
Are you kidding? Microsoft has always been shit at math. According to Microsoft Excel, 2 + 2 = 12:04 AM Jan 1, 1900.
Integers are days in Excel, no? So I think 2+2= 12:00 AM Jan 5, 1900.
Intel already did that in the 90’s with the FDIV bug.
Wrong, they already had that with Excel. There were a bunch of functions that delivered wrong returns for years, and none of the users (mostly economists) had noticed.
What, you don’t always work with 16 digit numbers that are automatically truncated? What could go wrong? We don’t use 16 digit numbers for anything, really./
It’s hard to believe that’s still a thing but it is!
This is such a misguided article, sorry.
Obviously you’d be an idiot to use AI to number crunch.
But AI can be extremely useful for sentence analytics. For example, if you’re trying to classify user feedback as positive or negative and then derive categories from the masses of text and squash the text into those categories.
Google Sheets already does tonnes of this and we’re not writing articles about it.
Yeah, it’s like complaining that a hammer isn’t good at turning a screw. There’s a whole trend of Chess content creators featuring games against ChatGPT where it forgets the position or plays illegal moves, and it just doesn’t mean anything. ChatGPT was never designed or intended to be able to evaluate a chess position, and incidentally, we do have computer programs that do exactly that and have been better than any human player since the 1990s. So what is even the point?
And what you could do is to enable an LLM to use these tools and reason about their outcome. Complaining that an LLM isn’t good at adding numbers is like complaining that humans aren’t as fast as calculators when multiplying large numbers.
Give Microsoft some credit! Excel has been able to come up with wrong answers for decades. For example, reporting 1900 as a leap year.
That was partly a result of seeking explicit compatibility with Lotus, IIRC.
seeking explicit compatibility with Lotus
I need a shower.
There’s an old story about the lead developer at Texas Instruments saying “I want a computer that fits in my pocket”. And then his staff dutifully measured the pocket to spec before proceeding to perform a feat of miniaturization that would revolutionize the modern world.
I’m trying to imagine one of the techies, from way out in the back, saying “Does it have to get the right answer?” Then getting fired, walking off the job, and walking into Microsoft with 10x the salary the next day.
“Microsoft Excel is testing a new AI-powered function that can automatically fill cells in your spreadsheets.”
Every year, Microsoft gives me more reasons to permanently leave their products.
Unfortunately, due to compatibility with financial and other Windows-only software I still need to run Windows, but I am down to two rigs and it might go down to one in the new year.
A virtual machine running windows, to host just those apps, might be a good step away at this point.
apparently you should be able to run any windows app with WinApps on linux, but I think they have a bug or something right now because I haven’t been able to get it to work.
The problem is that they are still Microsoft applications. You can’t say “I’ll leave Microsoft!” and run their software in a Windows simulator anyway. That would be … inaccurate, to say the least.
Why would anyone use an LLM as calculator?
That just doesn’t make sense.
It is like using a calculator as typewriter because it can spell 80085.
So what you are saying is, my car is a typewriter?
Did you just take a picture of your car’s boobs at 60k/h? High speed boobs shots hahahaha
Maybe :P
It’s a legal requirement when your car hits 80085 that you must take a photo, it supersedes all other laws.
Microsoft might agree with this.
Yes, they can sell your driving habits to insurance companies, so yes. What was the question?
I did this with my car when I got to that point and sent it to my girlfriend, but I photoshopped it so it said I was going over 100. Anyway I thought it was funny.
I was in the car with my missus, every 2 seconds she was making sure I hadn’t missed the big moment. She’s a good egg.
Keep her!
That’s the plan! Married 13 years this year 😊
To waste electric energy. All those power plants produce immense amounts of energy that needs to be consumed. If we didn’t have LLMs, the pollution of those plants would be for nothing. At least now, there is an attempt to put it in good use.
Heh heh 80085
High brow humour indeed
Well, there is a use case.
I don’t know much about statistics. I can (i assume) as the ai questions in natural language that I would otherwise have to research how to calculate.
Of course, I may get a result, but I won’t be any smarter. If that was the goal, then great.
There are things that could be done to improve Excel. For instance, fully integrate python and allow it to be used to create custom functions. Then, maybe one day, VBA can ride off into the sunset where it belongs.
Adding Copilot to Excel is not an improvement because Copilot and all other LLM based platforms frequently barfs out totally incorrect information about how to do something in Excel.
“You do that using <X> formula.”
No, I can’t, you worthless pile of shit because THAT FORMULA DOESNT EXIST.
Integrated python scripts in excel sounds like a malware developers dream.
I mean… Yeah, but the same can be said for VB?
Especially since VBA can make calls to the Windows API directly and through that avenue do all kinds of funky things to your system.
Yeah, but lots more tooling and libraries for Python. Its just one more attack surface 🤷
And a nightmare for an application developer told to make some app with a spreadsheet for a database scale
Could result in some very cursed codebases.
“We dont use git, we just update the excel spreadsheet”
I’ve worked at places where they did that anyway lol
That’s just called Access
Is that creepy thing still alive?
It can’t be … but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. I remember making fun of Access on StackOverflow circa 2008 and running afoul of some dude there who was like the last living Access consultant on Earth. I’ve never encountered defensive rage like that before or since.
Fun Access fact, the Diebold-manufactured voting machines that featured prominently in the 2000 presidential election cycle used an Access database as their underlying data storage mechanism. Access DBs did incorporate an audit table - which was manually-editable.
That explains why they didn’t want anyone investigating the machines. Did proper authorities finally get access (no pun intended lol) to investigate? Or was that already known?
No, this came out after the election was settled. There was a woman that maintained a website covering all these details called BlackBoxVoting or something like that (long gone now).
I did not want to read this, today … or ever.
Surely there’s some sort of sandboxing that could be done? Like start by disallowing sys calls entirely
Definitely, but sandboxes can be escaped, and you can’t protect everything via sandbox. Apparently its all cloud anyway, but if it were local and sandboxed, there are still exploits like rowhammer and spectre that may cause further risks.
Its taken years to get browser sandboxes to where they are, and even they get broken every so often.
They foresaw that. That’s because python on Excel doesn’t run locally, but in the cloud and then returns the result to you: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-python-in-excel-55643c2e-ff56-4168-b1ce-9428c8308545
That’s even worse!
That’s the worst possible solution to that problem. Why can’t they just develop their own script that’s Turing complete but doesn’t have any system calls?
Or just use Lua compiled without the system calls. This is done by many video games. İt’s 2025, there is no need to create new domain specific languages.
Or use embedded Lisp, like all the cool kids.
Still sounds like you’d be shipping your data to the cloud, where it can be exfilled from there.
Would potentially be a great phishing tool, just need to trick someone into putting sensitive data into a precooked excel file, and it gets exfilled.
Currently only for business customers which probably use OneDrive or SharePoint anyways, so it’s not that they need that to exfiltrate data. But for a phishing/hacking attempt? There are probably some nice possibilities.
Fair point. Of course that’s already a problem with Excel. It would probably have to be disabled by default just like VBA macros.
Yeah, no doubt.
Having access to visual basic is dangerous enough, let alone Python
Yea like what? It’s been a big increase in workflow for me.
Increase in workflow? Like there are more steps to perform the same task? Because workflow isn’t work volume or units if output. It’s the process that gets the work done.
Did the increase in “workflow” get you more money or more work for the same money?
Like I spend less time trying to build formulas and I can create formulas and tools I normally wouldn’t with it because I can have a conversations about what I want to do and it provides suggestions.
I mean… they responded in agreement to a comment that said it’s not an improvement. So it seems to me that it also would not increase the money they get out of it.
How did it improve your workflow?
I have a conversation about what I want to do and it provides suggestions and formulas or tools I wasn’t even aware of that stopped up productivity.
The manual exists though.
You know it’s easier, efficient and better to have a conversation with an AI rather than read an entire manual that won’t contain the thing you need right?
You know, all the things it’s advertised to do.
Only to find the “AI” hallucinating functions that won’t work. Or won’t do the thing you were told they do.
Most times it works. When it doesn’t, it’ll still get me 90% of a solution and I can use the manual or other means to finish it. Again a much faster and better approach. I don’t need to spend hours of my time reading manuals that barely touch on the knowledge I need just to bash keys and hope for the best. Plus it’s conversational so it engages other parts of the brain as a learning tool.
These fucking people use a rubber duck for the same thing
Lol you shared your personal experience and got downvoted… lmao even
Lemmy is propaganda against AI at this point. Not sure what paid for it but it has all the markers. Feels like being in the comment section of ny post articles.
Same energy as talking online about immigrants, nuclear energy or marvel
It’s using a community to post toxic and dystopian articles over and over again. Lemmy technology communitys are extremely vile. Not sure why it happened but it’s turned toxic
There isn’t propaganda against AI, it’s totally grassroots because companies are overselling it.
No it isn’t. There is 100% propaganda and media targeting communities to spread it.
The Gap between peoples opinion towards AI in everyday life vs people on Lemmy is massive and a good indicator that Lemmy is astroturfed to be toxic towards it. People who are influenced cannot see it, outsiders can though. It’s like seeing right wingers talk about immigrants. They’ll never be able to see how their news and media influence them. That is their truth and it’s as true to them as hate towards AI is towards lemmings in places like c/technology
Look at the articles posted, the headlines, the appeals used, the comments. It has all the markers of an Astro turf campaign.
The Gap between peoples opinion towards AI in everyday life vs people on Lemmy is massive and a good indicator that Lemmy is astroturfed
By who? Your conspiracy theory makes no sense. Why would anyone want to do that.
You really can’t imagine why corporations and political groups who spend billions paying people to manufacture narratives and flood feeds might hate the idea of ordinary people suddenly having their own free, on-demand content factory, fact-checker, and megaphone?
That’s on both sides of the political spectrum. These AI tools are not just Google chat. You can build with them rapidly. Is it some revolutionary thing? No
But can it be a game changer in some areas? Absolutely.
They moved rapidly with the media on this. Compare headlines for AI to any other yellow journalistic topic. They’re identical
Lemmy is pretty consistent with the people I know IRL in terms of opinions on AI.
Not where I am. I haven’t met anyone irl that has any spite with AI. They think it’s interesting. Have tried it a few times. But nobody is out there saying fuck AI.
Our very own economic Butlerian jihad.
OK, I’m not really mad at this. I already used Copilot to design a table for me in Excel and it worked really well. It did everything for me, and I just had to copy-paste the formulas into their appropriate spots. If it’s built-in, possibly will work better.
Not everybody needs to be an Excel expert, after all. Having that functionality might be actually beneficial.
How do you know those formulas are correct?
By verifying that they’re correct…? 🤔
I think the concern is that you can come up with a number of formulas that will get correct answers for some combinations of values and not others.
If you do not understand the logic of the formula, and what each function does, how do you verify they are correct and will always give you the results you think they will? Double check every result in its entirety?
That’s my thinking
If you know what you’re doing, it’s significantly easier to do it yourself
You at least have some reassurance it’s correct (or at least thought through)
Verification is important, but I think you’re omitting from your imagination a real and large category of people who have a basic familiarity with spreadsheets and computers, so are able to understand a potential solution and see whether it makes sense, but who do not have the ability to quickly come up with it themselves.
In language it’s the difference between receptive and productive vocabulary: there are words which you understand but which you would never say or write because they’re part of your receptive, but not productive knowledge.
There are times when this will go wrong, because the LLM will can produce something plausible but incorrect and such a person will fail to spot it. And of course if you blindly trust it with something you’re not actually capable of (or willing to) check then you will also get bad results.
yes okay dad
Any time, nutsack.
I’m a dad and I approve this message.
Such a complicated way just to add more RAND() to formulas.
