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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

#181

Post by andybak »

simonw wrote: post #137
skeptrune wrote: post #132

Simon posting tiktok quotes on his blog was not on my 2025 bingo card.

This isn't the first: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/8/pearlmania500/ and https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/29/dealing-with-your-ai-o... Also this fun diversion into Occlupanids: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/8/holotypic-occlupanid-re... A lot of people complain that the internet isn't as weird and funny as it used to be. The weird and funny stuff is all on TikTok!

The mismatch between what people not on it think TikTok is like and what it's actually like (once you get the algo tuned to your taste) is pretty crazy.

But then the "new user" experience is so horrific in terms of the tacky default content it serves you that I'm not surprised so many people don't get past it.

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

#182

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #73
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?

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.

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

I disagree. If something can't be as accurate as a (good) human, then it's useless to me. I'll just ask the human instead, because I know that the human is going to be worth listening to.

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

#184

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

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…

I'm disappointed that my human life has no value in a world of AI. You can retort with "ah but you'll be entertained and on super-drugs so you won't care!", but I would further retort that I'd rather live in a universe where I can contribute something, no matter how small.

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

#185

Post by stavros »

wat10000 wrote: post #169
stavros wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think programs are predictable, I have a bridge to sell you. The only relevant metric here is how often each thing makes mistakes. Programs are the most reliable, though far from 100%, humans are much less than that, and LLMs are around the level of humans, depending on the humans and the LLM.

Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. In my life, I've never seen `sort` produce output that wasn't properly sorted. I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. I have seen filesystems fail to produce the exact same data that was previously written, but this is something that happens once in a blue moon, and the process is done probably millions of times a…

> Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well.

This is a tautology.

> I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers.

https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png

> And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time.

When we're talking about reliability, it doesn't matter whether a thing can be reliable in theory, it matters whether it's reliable in practice. Software is unreliable, humans are unreliable, LLMs are unreliable. To claim otherwise is just wishful thinking.

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

#186

Post by hitarpetar »

ryandrake wrote: post #173
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?

I've been trying to open my mind and "give AI a chance" lately. I spent all day yesterday struggling with Claude Code's utter incompetence. It behaves worse than any junior engineer I've ever worked with: - It says it's done when its code does not even work, sometimes when it does not even compile. - When asked to fix a bug, it confidently declares victory without actually having fixed the bug. - It gets into this mo…

yOu'Re HoLdInG iT wRoNg

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

#187

Post by hitarpetar »

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.

great, now who are you paying to sort the right output from the wrong output?

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

#188

Post by Esophagus4 »

daveguy wrote: post #160
Esophagus4 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I’m suggesting that she is ineffective exactly because she stays in her box. She should replaced with someone who says, “this box doesn’t need to be here… there is a better way of doing things.” NOT to be confused with the junior engineer who comes into a project and says it’s garbage and suggests we rewrite it from scratch in ${hotLanguage} because they saw it on a blog somewhere.

It may not be what you meant to say, but it's exactly what you are saying where ${hotLanguage} is the latest automation platform or AI gimmick.

I’m not sure why you’re going down to the mat for hanging onto redundant people putting numbers in spreadsheets.

At large companies in particular, there are far too many people who simply turn their widgets - this was the entire point of the tech revolution.

Think about how many bookkeepers were needed before Excel. Someone could have made your exact same argument (but it’s just the latest gimmick!) about Excel 30 years ago. And yet, technology will make businesses more efficient whether people stand in its way or not.

Even at a small company of one or two, QuickBooks will reduce the amount of bookkeepers and accountants needed. TurboTax will further reduce that.

We will need fewer people in the future maintaining their Excel spreadsheets, and more people building the automation for those processes.

The change averse will always find reasons not to adapt - they will create their own obsolescence.

(inb4 but it’s way more expensive to pay developers to automate!)

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

#189

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

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…

It is it even worse in a sense that. It is not either. It is not neither. It is not even both as variations of Branda exist throughout the multiverse in all shapes and forms including one that can troubleshoot her own formulas with ease and accuracy.

But you are absolutely right about one thing. Brenda can be asked and, depending on her experience, she might give you a good idea of what might have happened. LLMs still seem to not have that 'feature'.

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

#190

Post by Planktonne »

ItsBob wrote: post #104
lemonwaterlime wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Et…

I see where you are coming from but in my head, Brenda isn't real. She represents the typical domain-experts that use Excel imo. They have an understanding of some part of the business and express it while using Excel in a deterministic way: enter a value of X, multiply it by Y and it keeps producing Z forever! You can train AI to be a better domain expert. That's not in question, however with AI, you introduce a dic…

> You can train AI to be a better domain expert. That's not in question.

I think that very much is in question.

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