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I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

simonwillison.net

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Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#71

Post by RajT88 »

9dev wrote: post #19
HeavyStorm wrote: post #13

Nay-sayers need to decide whether they fear AI because AI is dumb and will fuckup or because AI is smart and will take over.

Both are valid concerns, no need to decide. Take the USA: They are currently lead by a patently dumb president who fucks up the global economy, and at the same time they are powerful enough to do so! For a more serious example, consider the Paperclip Problem[0] for a very smart system that destroys the world due to very dumb behaviour. [0]: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/ai-and-paperclip-problem

The paperclip problem is a bit hand-wavey about intelligence. It is taken as a given than unlimited intelligence would automatically win presumably because it could figure out how to do literally anything.

But let's consider real life intelligence:

- Our super geniuses do not take over the world. It is the generationally wealthy who do.

- Super geniuses also have a tendency to be terribly neurotic, if not downright mentally ill. They can have trouble functioning in society.

- There is no thought here about different kinds of intelligence and the roles they play. It is assumed there is only one kind, and AI will have it in the extreme.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#72

Post by lemonwaterlime »

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #39

I 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…

The “Brenda” example is a lumped sum fallacy where there is an “average” person or phenomenon that we can benchmark against. Such a person doesn't exist, leading to these dissonant, contradictory dichotomies.

The fact of the matter is that there are some people who can hold lots of information in their head at once. Others are good at finding information. Others still are proficient at getting people to help them. Etc. Any of these people could be tasked with solving the same problem and they would leverage their actual, particular strengths rather than some nebulous “is good or bad at the task” metric.

As it happens, nearly all the discourse uses this lumped sum fallacy, leading to people simultaneously talking past one another while not fundamentally moving the discussion forward.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#73

Post by Esophagus4 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #57
Aeolun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because it doesn’t have to be as accurate as a human to be a helpful tool.

That is precisely why we have humans in the loop for so many AI applications.

If [AI + human reviewer to correct it] is some multiple more efficient than [human alone], there is still plenty of value.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#74

Post by d--b »

It looks like the OP is thinking that AI causing errors in spreadsheets is going to make the whole economy collapse.

When tools break, people stop using them before they sink the ship down. If AI is that terrible at spreadsheet, people will just revert to Brenda.

And it's not like spreadsheets have no errors right now.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#75

Post by martin-t »

candiddevmike wrote: post #57
Aeolun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because it's much cheaper.

So now you don't have to pay people to do their actual work, you assign the work to ML ("AI") and then pay the people to check what it generated. That's a very different task, menial and boring, but if it produces more value for the same amount of input money, then it's economical to do so.

And since checking the output is often a lower skilled job, you can even pay the people less, pocketing more as an owner.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#76

Post by nashashmi »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #25

Hmmm 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…

> We need fewer Brendas...

We need more Brendas (those who excel goddesses come and kiss on the forehead) and need less people who are disrespectful of Brendas. The example in this post is someone giving more respect to AI than Brenda.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#78

Post by xyzzy123 »

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #39

I 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…

The promise of AI is that it lets you "skip the drudgery of thinking about the details" but sometimes that is exactly what you don't want. You want one or more humans with experience in the business domain to demonstrate they have thought about the details very carefully. The spreadsheet computes a result but its higher purpose is a kind of "proof" this thinking was done.

If the actual thinking doesn't matter and you just need some plausible numbers that look the part (also a common situation), gen ai will do that pretty well.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#79

Post by martin-t »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #25

Hmmm 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…

Y'know why people don't automate their jobs? It's not a skill issue it's an incentives issue.

If you do your job, you get paid periodically. If you automate your job, you get paid once for automating it and then nothing, despite your automation constantly producing value for the company.

To fix this, we need to pay people continually for their past work as long as it keeps producing value.

Re: I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel

#80

Post by dsr_ »

elevatortrim wrote: post #60
quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #39

I 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

There are two kinds of reliability:

Machine reliability does the same thing the same way every time. If there's an error on some input, it will always make that error on that input, and somebody can investigate it and fix it, and then it will never make that error again.

Human reliability does the job even when there are weird variances or things nobody bothered to check for. If the printer runs out of paper, the human goes to the supply cabinet and gets out paper and if there is no paper the human decides whether to run out right now and buy more paper or postpone the print job until tomorrow; possibly they decide that the printing doesn't need to be done at all, or they go downstairs and use a different printer... Humans make errors but they fix them.

LLMs are not machine reliable and not human reliable.

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