It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes | Defector
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It’s not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of companies’ generative AI programs have failed to earn any profit whatsoever. Tech stocks tanked Tuesday, regarding broader fears that […]

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.

  • Alaknár@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    169·
    2 days ago

    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.

      • Alaknár@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        I’m talking about using it when you’re “not great at Excel”, not when “you can’t do basic math”.

        Always verify the results given to you by LLMs.

        • theparadox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          19·
          1 day ago

          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?

          • Alaknár@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            1·
            10 hours ago

            I think you’re completely missing the point here.

            I’m not great at Excel. That doesn’t mean I can’t do basic math, it means I struggle designing an xlookup or hlookup.

            If AI does that for me, I’ll be a happy bunny. And then run a dozen different iterations of data to verify that the results I’m getting are correct.

            This is what this integration is for - it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant. As are all LLMs.

            • theparadox@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              3 hours ago

              it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant.

              This is what I think AI and automation is generally good at and should be used for - mitigating unpleasant or repetitive work so that the focus of the user is productivity/creativity.

              This is what this integration is for - it’s not a replacement for a human brain, it’s an assistant. As are all LLMs.

              The context is something we disagree on wholeheartedly. Those funding and fundraising for AI and an enormous subset of those using are not looking to use AI in the way we are talking about. The prior are hoping to use AI to extract value from it at the expense of people who would otherwise need to be paid, or they and claim it can do anything and everything. Those using it, many of them, do not have a sufficient understanding to comprehend the solution. They are basically “vibe coding”. Tell the LLM to do something they aren’t knowledgeable about, then keep telling it to fix the problems until they don’t see problems anymore. Yes, spreadsheet formulas are likely simpler than an app but I know people who use AI for Google Sheets and they rarely test any results, let alone rigorously.

              Anecdotal, sure, but I don’t have enough faith in humanity to presume everyone else is doing something wildly different.

              Edit: To expand, LLMs specifically, are what I consider to be the worst side of “AI”. You can use ML and neural networks to create “AI” (self altering, alien blackbox algorithms) to become proficient in analyzing information and solving problems. LLMs create a situation where the model appears intelligent because it knows how to mimic language… and so now we pretend like it can do whatever people can do.

          • Lightfire228@pawb.socialEnglish
            7·
            2 days ago

            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)

            • FishFace@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              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.