2w ago

It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes

It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes | Defector

Money quote:

Excel requires some skill to use (to the point where high-level Excel is a competitive sport), and AI is mostly an exercise in deskilling its users and humanity at large.

Fuck AI @lemmy.world

technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com

2w ago

It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes

defector.com /it-took-many-years-and-billions-of-dollars-but-microsoft-finally-invented-a-calculator-that-is-wrong-sometimes

Technology @lemmy.zip

misk @piefed.social

2w ago

It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes

defector.com /it-took-many-years-and-billions-of-dollars-but-microsoft-finally-invented-a-calculator-that-is-wrong-sometimes

83 comments

There are things that could be done to improve Excel. For instance, fully integrate python and allow it to be used to create custom functions. Then, maybe one day, VBA can ride off into the sunset where it belongs.
Adding Copilot to Excel is not an improvement because Copilot and all other LLM based platforms frequently barfs out totally incorrect information about how to do something in Excel.
"You do that using
<X>
formula."
No, I can't, you worthless pile of shit because THAT FORMULA DOESNT EXIST.
- Integrated python scripts in excel sounds like a malware developers dream.
  
  And a nightmare for an application developer told to make some app with a spreadsheet for a database scale
  
  Surely there’s some sort of sandboxing that could be done? Like start by disallowing sys calls entirely
  
  I mean... Yeah, but the same can be said for VB?
  
  Fair point. Of course that's already a problem with Excel. It would probably have to be disabled by default just like VBA macros.
  
  They foresaw that. That's because python on Excel doesn't run locally, but in the cloud and then returns the result to you: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-python-in-excel-55643c2e-ff56-4168-b1ce-9428c8308545
  
  Yeah, no doubt.
  Having access to visual basic is dangerous enough, let alone Python
- Yea like what? It's been a big increase in workflow for me.
  
  Increase in workflow? Like there are more steps to perform the same task? Because workflow isn't work volume or units if output. It's the process that gets the work done.
  Did the increase in "workflow" get you more money or more work for the same money?
  
  Lol you shared your personal experience and got downvoted... lmao even
Why would anyone use an LLM as calculator?
That just doesn't make sense.
It is like using a calculator as typewriter because it can spell 80085.
- So what you are saying is, my car is a typewriter?
  
  Microsoft might agree with this.
  
  I did this with my car when I got to that point and sent it to my girlfriend, but I photoshopped it so it said I was going over 100. Anyway I thought it was funny.
  
  Did you just take a picture of your car's boobs at 60k/h? High speed boobs shots hahahaha
- Heh heh 80085
  
  High brow humour indeed
- To waste electric energy. All those power plants produce immense amounts of energy that needs to be consumed. If we didn't have LLMs, the pollution of those plants would be for nothing. At least now, there is an attempt to put it in good use.
- Well, there is a use case.
  I don't know much about statistics. I can (i assume) as the ai questions in natural language that I would otherwise have to research how to calculate.
  Of course, I may get a result, but I won't be any smarter. If that was the goal, then great.
There's an old story about the lead developer at Texas Instruments saying "I want a computer that fits in my pocket". And then his staff dutifully measured the pocket to spec before proceeding to perform a feat of miniaturization that would revolutionize the modern world.
I'm trying to imagine one of the techies, from way out in the back, saying "Does it have to get the right answer?" Then getting fired, walking off the job, and walking into Microsoft with 10x the salary the next day.
Give Microsoft some credit! Excel has been able to come up with wrong answers for decades. For example, reporting 1900 as a leap year.
- That was partly a result of seeking explicit compatibility with Lotus, IIRC.
  
  seeking explicit compatibility with Lotus
  I need a shower.
Our very own economic Butlerian jihad.
OK, I'm not really mad at this. I already used Copilot to design a table for me in Excel and it worked really well. It did everything for me, and I just had to copy-paste the formulas into their appropriate spots. If it's built-in, possibly will work better.
Not everybody needs to be an Excel expert, after all. Having that functionality might be actually beneficial.
- How do you know those formulas are correct?
  
  By verifying that they're correct...? 🤔
  
  I'm talking about using it when you're "not great at Excel", not when "you can't do basic math".
  Always verify the results given to you by LLMs.
- yes okay dad
  
  Any time, nutsack.
Wrong, they already had that with Excel. There were a bunch of functions that delivered wrong returns for years, and none of the users (mostly economists) had noticed.
- What, you don't always work with 16 digit numbers that are automatically truncated? What could go wrong? We don't use 16 digit numbers for anything, really./
  It's hard to believe that's still a thing but it is!
This is such a misguided article, sorry.
Obviously you’d be an idiot to use AI to number crunch.
But AI can be extremely useful for sentence analytics. For example, if you’re trying to classify user feedback as positive or negative and then derive categories from the masses of text and squash the text into those categories.
Google Sheets already does tonnes of this and we’re not writing articles about it.
- Yeah, it's like complaining that a hammer isn't good at turning a screw. There's a whole trend of Chess content creators featuring games against ChatGPT where it forgets the position or plays illegal moves, and it just doesn't mean anything. ChatGPT was never designed or intended to be able to evaluate a chess position, and incidentally, we do have computer programs that do exactly that and have been better than any human player since the 1990s. So what is even the point?
  
  And what you could do is to enable an LLM to use these tools and reason about their outcome. Complaining that an LLM isn’t good at adding numbers is like complaining that humans aren’t as fast as calculators when multiplying large numbers.
Intel already did that in the 90's with the FDIV bug.

83 comments