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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

#141

Post by cryptonym »

anon721656321 wrote: post #68
candiddevmike wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If a worker could be right 50% of the time and get paid 1 cent to write a 5000 word essay on a random topic, and do it in less than 30 seconds. Then I think managers would be fine hiring that worker for that rate as well.

5000 half-right words is worthless output. That can even lead to negative productivity.

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

#142

Post by glimshe »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #140
maccard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everywhere I’ve ever worked has had that mission critical box. At one of my jobs we had a server rack with UPS, etc, all the usual business. On the floor next to it was a dell desktop with a piece of paper on it that said “do not turn off”. It had our source control server in it, and the power button didn’t work. We did eventually move it to something more sensible but we had that for a long time

with only one person on earth being able to access it? so if that person is hit by a car everything goes down?

Pretty much

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

#143

Post by simonw »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #139
candiddevmike wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How much compute costs is it for the AI to do Brenda's job? Not total AI spend, but the fraction that replaced Brenda. That's why they'd fire a human but keep using the AI.

Brenda has been kissed on her forehead by the Excel goddess herself. She is irreplaceable.

(More seriously, she also has 20+ years of institutional knowledge about how the company works, none of which has ever been captured anywhere else.)

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

#144

Post by nerdjon »

ItsBob wrote: post #82
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…

It's not as black-and-white as "Brenda good, AI bad". It's much more nuanced than this. When it comes to (traditional) coding, for the most part, when I program a function to do X, every single time I run that function from now until the heat death of the sun, it will always produce Y. Forever! When it does, we understand why, and when it doesn't, we also can understand why it didn't! When I use AI to perform X, ever…

> When I use AI to perform X, every single time I run that AI from now until the heat death of the sun it will maybe produce Y. Forever! When it does, we don't understand why, and when it doesn't, we also don't understand why!

To make this even worse, it may even produce Y just enough times to make it seem reliable and then it is unleashed without supervision, running thousands or millions of times, wrecking havoc producing Z in a large number of places.

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

#145

Post by thisisit »

Don't be like that. I work at a Fortune 500 and Brenda wants that co-pilot in Excel because it can help her achieve so much more. What is so much more you ask? Brenda and her C-Suits can not define it but they know for sure Copilot in excel will lead to enormous time saving.

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

#146

Post by simonw »

7thaccount wrote: post #135
Esophagus4 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair - I was creating a straw man mostly to make a point. The people I’m thinking aren’t running SQL queries or scripts, they’re merely collection points for data. So one good BI developer who knows Tableau and Salesforce and Excel and SQL can replace those pure collection points with a better process, but they can also generate insight into the data because they have some business understanding from being close to t…

I think that is a fair point too. The person that builds the Tableau dashboard could just send Brenda a screenshot once a month and that saves everyone time.

A screenshot of a Tableau dashboard is possibly the most dangerous form of internal data communication there is, because it entirely removes any chance of digging into that dashboard and figuring out what queries created it and spotting the incorrect assumptions they made along the way.

A hill I will die on is that business analytics need "view source" or they aren't worth the pixels they are rendered with.

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

#147

Post by Lord-Jobo »

afandian wrote: post #92
elevatortrim wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was brought up on the refrain of "aren't computers silly, they do exactly what you tell them to do to the letter, even if it's not what you meant". That had its roots in computers mostly being programmable BASIC machines. Then came the apps and notifications, and we had to caveat "... when you're writing programs". Which is a diminishing part of the computer experience. And now we have to append "... unless you're…

We have absolutely descended, and rapidly, into “computers do whatever the fuck they want and there’s nothing you can do about it” in the past 5 years, and gen AI is only half of the problem.

The other half comes from how incredibly opinionated and controlling the tech giants have become. Microsoft doesn’t even ALLOW consent on windows (yes or maybe later), Google is doing all it can to turn the entire internet into a chrome-only experience, and Apple has to be fought for an entire decade to allow users to place app icons wherever they want on their Home Screen.

There is no question that the overly explicit quirky paradigm of the past was better for almost everyone. It allowed for user control and user expression, but apparently those concepts are bad for the wallet of big tech so they have to go. Generative AI is just the latest biggest nail in the coffin.

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

#148

Post by pohl »

afandian wrote: post #92
elevatortrim wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was brought up on the refrain of "aren't computers silly, they do exactly what you tell them to do to the letter, even if it's not what you meant". That had its roots in computers mostly being programmable BASIC machines. Then came the apps and notifications, and we had to caveat "... when you're writing programs". Which is a diminishing part of the computer experience. And now we have to append "... unless you're…

Pop culture characters like Lt. Commander Data seem anachronistic now.

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

#149

Post by Zigurd »

phyzome wrote: post #115
Zigurd wrote: post #95

It's verifier law. Coding agents are useful and good and real products because when they screw up, things stop working almost always before they can do damage. Coding agents are flawed in ways that existing tools are good at catching, never mind the more obvious build and runtime errors. Letting AI write your emails and create your P&L and cash flow projections doesn't have to run the gauntlet of tools that were crea…

Nah, I've seen them screw in all sorts of ways that would fail in some conditions and not others. You're way too optimistic about this.

Fair. I've been using the coding agent in Android Studio Canary to do exploratory code in Dart/Flutter and using ATProto. Low stakes, but higher productivity is a significant benefit. It's a daily surprise how brilliant it is it's some things and how abysmal at others.

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

#150

Post by afandian »

pohl wrote: post #148
afandian wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was brought up on the refrain of "aren't computers silly, they do exactly what you tell them to do to the letter, even if it's not what you meant". That had its roots in computers mostly being programmable BASIC machines. Then came the apps and notifications, and we had to caveat "... when you're writing programs". Which is a diminishing part of the computer experience. And now we have to append "... unless you're…

Pop culture characters like Lt. Commander Data seem anachronistic now.

It was Second Technician Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSc., SSc. all along.
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