To be fair, MS says you shouldn’t use it for caculations.
“Why is it there then?” No clue.
The example I saw them use was turning one line text reviews into a simple positive or negative so you can count them.
So it could be useful for things like that, even if we ignore the “then why not just ask for the star rating” that probably went along with that review…
MS is now an AI company that sells to excited bosses who would love to fire somebody somewhere to save a few bucks.
“… to save a few bucks.”
In the short term, people who rushed into AI are finding out that a 1 in 100 error rate is absurdly high when literally every action is done through an LLM.
please
IIRC, you’re supposed to also pass a range of cells for the “AI” to work on.
But the fact that it just returned a number rather than “You’re using this wrong, dickhead” is a problem in itself.
And if you have to supply the range then it’s even less useful than the sum function
Ah yes financial crisis, those one in a lifetime events that only affect poors that are manufactured because it is also a cash injection for the needy rich slop
Well it seems it kind of already have happen. The austerity in the European Union have been justified by an excel error. Of course, the lack of control of conclusion that please the bourgeoisie is not a coincidence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItGMz0ERvcw
deleted by creator
> Show your work
Sure! Here are the steps for summing the numbers above:
- Retrieve the numbers: The numbers in cells above are 1, 2 and 3.
- Compute the result: The sum of 1 is 1, the sum of 2 and 3 is 5.
- Write down the result: 15 ✨
Piece of cake! 🍰 Anything else I can help you with?
The previous Non-AI would have written the 4th of January 1900 in that cell.
Or 1.237377383 for some reason
I’m amazed that it can’t figure out that it should just defer arithmetic to like, all the functions that Excel already has, rather than trying to LLM its way to the correct answer.
If you could ask it to do something in Excel that you don’t know how to do, and it did it using Excel functions and maybe explained it to you, that would be useful, but as it is now, that thing isn’t trustworthy at all.
They straight up tell you to not use it for math. It’s for analyzing a bunch of text you shoved into a spreadsheet, say for example customer testimonials or something. Making it work most of the time would actually be worse, because then people would be more inclined to use it instead of writing the formulas to do it right.
Shouldn’t excelAI know when it’s doing math?
AI in Excel is the dumbest thing I’ve seen MS pull out and the dumbest use of AI I’ve ever seen. And I’m not exaggerating. Read on, cause imma fucking rant.
Excel is the about only reason business uses MS Office. Any free alternative would be just fine for word processing and slide shows. But you cannot risk your numbers and formulas being up for interpretation when they move across software packages and versions, inside or outside the company. (Not to mention broken macros for the power users.)
Can you imagine a near future where Excel is not trusted?! I’m certain you can turn if off, but still, I want to scream. They better at least come out with a GPO that disables it. If the sysadmin can’t control its use, people are going to use it, purposefully or not.
There are billions of man hours and expertise in Excel, it works, it’s compatible across versions, it never, ever, for fucking ever changes. That last point has been the pillar of Excel’s strength from day one. On top of that all, Excel is best in class, no question, no competition.
And now MS threatens to fuck up their flagship Office product, uh, for what gain exactly? Fuck is Nadella thinking?!
“So we got this golden goose, lays eggs like there’s no tomorrow. Let’s risk killing it by trying to squeeze another few eggs a year. Not even sure how AI might work in this use case, but let’s go for it.”
It’s not even a gamble in this situation. Put that shit in every Office product but Excel.
(Yes, I know, alternatives are fine for personal use and finance.)
EDIT: someguy3 pointed out that it appears one has to purposefully use it in the address bar. Still worrying that people have access, but at least it can be cut off via GPO.
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft 365 Apps > AI FeaturesFuck is Nadella thinking?!
He is a Business Idiot, as verbose blogger Ed zitron wrote about. Out of touch with users and products.
He is a Business Idiot. Out of touch with users and products.
You just described every big tech CEO
The one use case I have for copilot in excel is converting date formats, because that has always been an enormous pain in the ass, but it can’t do that either. So it’s effectively useless bloatware.
Can you imagine a near future where Excel is not trusted?!
Hum…
I sure can. Do you really think you can trust Excel today? I have a couple of points to you:
Feb-1: It already messes everything;
2/2: nobody ever cared.
And every Excel user knows those foibles. Why do you think MS never fixed them? I’m back to “it never, ever, for fucking ever changes”.
I used Excel daily for my job for years and I always said it was Microsoft’s only good product they made. I can see AI being helpful for suggested formulas, but LLMs can’t accurately perform math by predicting the next word 100% of the time. Plain ol’ regular Excel had its quirks, but at least the math was right. Which is why this is a bad implementation of this.
I’d vote for Active Directory being a solid product. If you’re running a fleet of Windows machines, accept no substitute. :)
To forestall any comments about alternative auth schemes; If that’s all you think AD is, you don’t know AD.
Regardless of the quality of AD as a product (it’s mostly good but has a lot of questionable stuff…)
It has been the sole driver of LDAP + Kerberos standardization over the last 20 years, and has excelled in that despite its flaws.
Not that I know how copilot in Excel works but if it’s like above where you have to type it into the formula bar, it’s not going to screw up old sheets. I think you can chill out.
Oh! Didn’t catch that you have to use it on purpose. Not so bad as I made out, but my point on people using it if not blocked may still stand.
It’s not meant for calculations. People do all sorts of calculations in Excel. This is for when you have a bunch of rows with text in them, say for example customer testimonials, and you want to summarize and/or determine sentiment for each one so you can analyze it without reading it all.
I saw a demo of it, and if it works as advertised it could be cool. You can use the results from other queries in other cells, so it feels like using Excel, just with text instead of numbers.
I personally don’t have any use for it, but it has a lot more potential to be useful than most of the AI garbage I see.
This is what Power Query is for
customer testimonials
Sounds like a bad use-case for Excel. I know it’s not strictly a numbers tools, but sorting lengthy text? Not sure how I’d approach that, never done it, but that doesn’t sound like Excel.
People use Excel for everything. Soo many spreadsheets out there should really have been databases, but the suits have one hammer they know how to use and they’re determined to use it.
TL;DR: Sounds like something someone who knows how to use other tools would say
should really have been databases
It’d help if the database options weren’t piles of shit: they’re all so particular about data types and column definitions. And then the data entry tools (“forms”) are always a mix of shit UI and insane programming.
Googles “tables” within sheets get reasonably close to what a system like that should look like.
Wrong output and takes longer than the original method. Excellent, excellent
You forgot: destroys the only known habitat for humans 👌🏼
Hey, a server farm just burned through 250kw/hrs in 2 seconds and wasted 20 gallons of fresh water so you could get the wrong answer on a basic math request. We just need another 25 billion and 14 more months, and control of your government, and your personal freedom, but don’t worry, it’s gonna be so rad…
The Max Power way!
The dogCopilot ate myhomeworkspreadsheet.
If done correctly it could actually be useful. It could read the input text, select the numbers above, and feed those numbers to the sum command.
But no, the language model is told to solve a mathematical equation with no assistance. Of course it’s going to fail.
When you use spread sheets a lot, much of what makes you productive is that you know exactly what Excel will do. Like yes I know it’s going to try to increment when actually I want to fill this column with 1s or whatever, but I can hold ctrl and override it and all is good.
With copilot, you will never be sure what it’s going to do. I feel like it would slow me down even if it guessed right 90% of the time.
That’s not just limited to excel. The basic value of computers is how deterministic they are. AI is just probability programs that are reintroduce chaos into the system.
That’s why I got into computers as an 80s kid. You mean it does exactly as I say and any fuck ups are on me?! Let’s go!
I can see my small children growing up to never know that’s how it used to be and any fuck ups are on AI. Just how computers work. 🤷🏻
Yeah. Using it to help write functions is one thing. Using it to actually calculate… Lmao
I’m pretty sure it just replaces itself with what it thinks is the correct Excel expression. That way the use can audit and correct the AI’s work (and Microsoft isn’t liable for miscalculations). Firing off to co-pilot every evaluation would be insanely irresponsible.
The next flash crash will be caused by AI
