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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

#321

Post by saghm »

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 disavow AI because while neither it or Brenda are perfect, Brenda consistently follows the instructions and can have an actual conversation with me to take feedback into account going forward. An AI will happily participate in those conversations, but whether it actually improves based on that feedback is not at all consistent. It's also a lot easier to find other humans who are meaningfully different than Brenda if I prefer to hire someone with a different working style, whereas right now the issues I describe above with BrendaBot are going to be essentially the same with any other AI I try to use instead.

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

#322

Post by snowwrestler »

Some companies may have only one Brenda, but what really makes accounting work is multiple Brendas. In the case of my employer, we have a pretty small finance dept but we pay a big firm to come in once a year to check the books. “Brenda as a service.” (BaaS)

Brendas actually aren’t totally perfect so the tools between Brendas need to deterministically store and show their work so they can reliably check each other. If the tool itself has a Brenda baked into it—even if it’s a very good Brenda simulation!—it seems like a company could run the risk of losing that deterministic basis for double-checking. And therefore lose track of their accounting reality.

Some people will for sure over-trust the AI in the spreadsheet and make some dumb mistakes. Let’s all remember though that dumb mistakes in business are not illegal, and the whole point of a private market is to enable “natural consequences” for businesses that make them. Some people will need to touch the hot stove of AI to understand how it could hurt them. I’m not sure there is any way to stop that, or even if we should.

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

#323

Post by wat10000 »

stavros wrote: post #300
wat10000 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many calculators do I need to have seen in order to make the claim that there are many calculators which are essentially 100% reliable? Note that I am referring to actual physical calculators, not calculator apps on computers.

Well, to make the claim you actually made, which is that you haven't seen a single calculator that was wrong , anywhere from zero to all of them. It's just that the "zero" end of that spectrum doesn't really tell us anything about calculators.

When was the last time you saw an actual calculator (not an app) give a wrong (not merely rounded) answer?

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

#324

Post by tempodox »

Deterministic formula evaluation is so boring. You can tell beforehand that the same input will produce the same result every time. With Copilot’s probabilistic formula evaluation you can never tell what the result will be, which makes things much more interesting and entertaining! Who wouldn’t want to have Copilot in Excel?

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

#325

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

simonw wrote: post #204
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The current generation of AI tools augment humans, they don't replace them. One of the most under-rated harms of AI at the moment is this sense of despair it causes in people who take the AI vendors at their word ("AGI! Outperform humans at most economically valuable work!")

If all AI progress stops soon, then I think you're right. However I think automating almost all software development is not far off from being an engineering problem if one is willing to burn enough tokens. I can imagine it being done right now. Just run 100-1000 claude instances and give them different roles. Some of them take screenshots (probably include better OCR/Screenshot analysis models than whatever Anthropic is running) and act as debuggers / user testers. Some of them do planning. Some of them are managers. Some of them are coders. Etc... I'd bet 100k that I could make Halo 1 in a month or two with this setup (minus the beautiful music, compelling story, quality voice acting, art -- though trashy replacements could be made).

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

#326

Post by mikalauskas »

simonw wrote: post #124
donatj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little over two paragraphs. Seems like it would have been simpler just to... type it out?

Why spend two minutes typing (and realistically longer than that, if I want to capture the exact transcript I would need to keep hitting pause and play and correcting myself) when I can spend ten seconds pasting a URL into my terminal and then dragging and dropping the resulting file onto the MacWhisper window? I actually transcribed the whole TikTok which was about 50% longer than what I quoted, then edited it down…

Then you spend these 2 minutes to check if a transcript is correct

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

#327

Post by simonw »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #325
simonw wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current generation of AI tools augment humans, they don't replace them. One of the most under-rated harms of AI at the moment is this sense of despair it causes in people who take the AI vendors at their word ("AGI! Outperform humans at most economically valuable work!")

If all AI progress stops soon, then I think you're right. However I think automating almost all software development is not far off from being an engineering problem if one is willing to burn enough tokens. I can imagine it being done right now. Just run 100-1000 claude instances and give them different roles. Some of them take screenshots (probably include better OCR/Screenshot analysis models than whatever Anthropi…

The more time I spend working with LLMs and coding agents to help me build software the less scared I am for my future career.

They let me work so much faster, but that's because they are amplifying my existing skills and experience.

I'm confident I will be able to run rings around non-software-engineers who have access to the same tools for may years to come.

There is so much more to building software than knowing how to write code.

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

#328

Post by simonw »

mikalauskas wrote: post #326
simonw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why spend two minutes typing (and realistically longer than that, if I want to capture the exact transcript I would need to keep hitting pause and play and correcting myself) when I can spend ten seconds pasting a URL into my terminal and then dragging and dropping the resulting file onto the MacWhisper window? I actually transcribed the whole TikTok which was about 50% longer than what I quoted, then edited it down…

Then you spend these 2 minutes to check if a transcript is correct

Checking if a transcript is correct takes massively less time than typing one out in the first place.

Especially since typing a transcript still involves checking that you got it right!

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

#329

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

simonw wrote: post #327
WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all AI progress stops soon, then I think you're right. However I think automating almost all software development is not far off from being an engineering problem if one is willing to burn enough tokens. I can imagine it being done right now. Just run 100-1000 claude instances and give them different roles. Some of them take screenshots (probably include better OCR/Screenshot analysis models than whatever Anthropi…

The more time I spend working with LLMs and coding agents to help me build software the less scared I am for my future career. They let me work so much faster, but that's because they are amplifying my existing skills and experience. I'm confident I will be able to run rings around non-software-engineers who have access to the same tools for may years to come. There is so much more to building software than knowing h…

Funnily enough, unrelated to this interaction I just happened to run into one of your articles on qwen-coder because I'm learning about local models.

So do you think that most of the low hanging fruit for improving these tools has already been picked because there's just so much energy going into AI these days? E.g. there's a clear boost by connecting to the internet, by configuring thinking mode, by configuring Agents (which I assume is some kind of specialized thinking mode), etc..., but perhaps the base technology could be leveling off? I was definitely lulled into a false sense of security when GPT5 underperformed, at least in the media, but this was shattered when I tried out claude.

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

#330

Post by simonw »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #329
simonw wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more time I spend working with LLMs and coding agents to help me build software the less scared I am for my future career. They let me work so much faster, but that's because they are amplifying my existing skills and experience. I'm confident I will be able to run rings around non-software-engineers who have access to the same tools for may years to come. There is so much more to building software than knowing h…

Funnily enough, unrelated to this interaction I just happened to run into one of your articles on qwen-coder because I'm learning about local models. So do you think that most of the low hanging fruit for improving these tools has already been picked because there's just so much energy going into AI these days? E.g. there's a clear boost by connecting to the internet, by configuring thinking mode, by configuring Agen…

It still feels really early to me. There is so much for us to figure out about how to best use this stuff - if model progress froze today I think we could still spend the next year figuring out new ways to take advantage of what we have today.

Claude Skills just a few weeks ago was one of those ideas that's obvious in hindsight but hadn't been baked into an idea yet.

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