10 billion dollars is probably going to be spent on automating excel, it’s going to happen
There needs to a financial equivalent to the Mythical Man Month.
I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
51–60 of 346 posts
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#52This reminds me of a friend whose company ran a daily perl script that committed every financial transaction of the day to a database. Without the script, the company could literally make no money irrespectively of sales because this database was one piece in a complex system for payment processor interoperability. The script ran in a machine located at the corner of a cubicle and only one employee had the admin pass…
That sounds pretty bad. Not a great argument against AI: "Our employees have created such a bad mess that AI wont work because only they know how the mess they created works".
[deleted]
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#53Hmmm the Brendas I know look a little different. “There are two Brendas - their job is to make spreadsheets in the Finance department. Well, not quite - they add the months and categories to empty spreadsheets, then they ask the other departments to fill in their sales numbers every month so it can be presented to management. “The two Brendas don’t seem to talk, otherwise they would realize that they’re both asking e…
> But that’s not what Brenda was hired for.
Are you suggesting that Brenda should stay in her box?
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#54This reminds me of a friend whose company ran a daily perl script that committed every financial transaction of the day to a database. Without the script, the company could literally make no money irrespectively of sales because this database was one piece in a complex system for payment processor interoperability. The script ran in a machine located at the corner of a cubicle and only one employee had the admin pass…
That sounds pretty bad. Not a great argument against AI: "Our employees have created such a bad mess that AI wont work because only they know how the mess they created works".
That is the luxury of theory.
Yes, most situations are terrible compared to what would be if an expert was present to perfect it.
Except if there isn’t an expert, and there’s a normal person, how do they know the output is right ?
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#55Hmmm the Brendas I know look a little different. “There are two Brendas - their job is to make spreadsheets in the Finance department. Well, not quite - they add the months and categories to empty spreadsheets, then they ask the other departments to fill in their sales numbers every month so it can be presented to management. “The two Brendas don’t seem to talk, otherwise they would realize that they’re both asking e…
With respect, you probably only see that bit of Finance, but doesn't mean that is all Brenda does.
At least half of the work in my senior Finance team involves meeting people in operations to find out what they are planning to do and to analyse the effects, and present them to decision makers to help them understand the consequences of decisions. For an AI to help, someone would have to trigger those conversations in the first place and ask the right questions.
The rest of the work involves tidying up all the exceptions that the automation failed on.
Meanwhile copilot in Excel can't even edit the sheet you are working on. If you say to it, 'give me a template for an expense claim' it will give you a sheet to download... probably with #REF written in where the answers should be.
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#56I find the contrast between two narratives around technology use so fascinating: 1. We advocate automation because people like Brenda are error-prone and machines are perfect. 2. We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone. These aren't contradictions because we only advocate for automation in limited contexts: when the task is understandable, the execution is reliable, the pro…
That automation you cite in your #1 is advocated for because it is deterministic and, with effort, fairly well understood (I have countless scripts solidly running for years).
I don't disavow AI, but like the author, I am not thrilled that the masses of excel users suddenly have access to Copilot (gpt4). I've used Copilot enough now to know that there will be huge, costly mistakes.
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#57I find the contrast between two narratives around technology use so fascinating: 1. We advocate automation because people like Brenda are error-prone and machines are perfect. 2. We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone. These aren't contradictions because we only advocate for automation in limited contexts: when the task is understandable, the execution is reliable, the pro…
> We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone. No, no. We disavow AI because our great leaders inexplicably trust it more than Brenda.
I don't understand why generative AI gets a pass at constantly being wrong, but an average worker would be fired if they performed the same way. If a manager needed to constantly correct you or double check your work, you'd be out. Why are we lowering the bar for generative AI?
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#58I'm more shocked that someone is using TikTok to speak things that actually make sense instead of mindless memes.
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#59Hmmm the Brendas I know look a little different. “There are two Brendas - their job is to make spreadsheets in the Finance department. Well, not quite - they add the months and categories to empty spreadsheets, then they ask the other departments to fill in their sales numbers every month so it can be presented to management. “The two Brendas don’t seem to talk, otherwise they would realize that they’re both asking e…
And then you end up with a team of five people each tree times as expensive as Brenda, and what used to be an email now takes a sprint and has to go through ticket system.
That’s not what I had in mind.
Then you end up with a report that goes out automatically every month to leadership pulled directly from the Salesforce data, along with a real time dashboard anyone in the org can look at, broken down by team, vertical, and sales volume.
Why are people so attached to manual process?
Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel
#60I find the contrast between two narratives around technology use so fascinating: 1. We advocate automation because people like Brenda are error-prone and machines are perfect. 2. We disavow AI because people like Brenda are perfect and the machine is error-prone. These aren't contradictions because we only advocate for automation in limited contexts: when the task is understandable, the execution is reliable, the pro…
No contradiction here:
When we say “machine”, we mean deterministic algorithms and predictable mechanisms.
Generative AI is neither of those things (in theory it is deterministic but not for any practical applications).
If we order by predictability:
Quick Sort > Brenda > Gen AI