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.
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.
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.
I mean… Yeah, but the same can be said for VB?
Especially since VBA can make calls to the Windows API directly and through that avenue do all kinds of funky things to your system.
Yeah, but lots more tooling and libraries for Python. Its just one more attack surface 🤷
And a nightmare for an application developer told to make some app with a spreadsheet for a database scale
Could result in some very cursed codebases.
“We dont use git, we just update the excel spreadsheet”
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
Still sounds like you’d be shipping your data to the cloud, where it can be exfilled from there.
Would potentially be a great phishing tool, just need to trick someone into putting sensitive data into a precooked excel file, and it gets exfilled.
Currently only for business customers which probably use OneDrive or SharePoint anyways, so it’s not that they need that to exfiltrate data. But for a phishing/hacking attempt? There are probably some nice possibilities.
That’s the worst possible solution to that problem. Why can’t they just develop their own script that’s Turing complete but doesn’t have any system calls?
Or just use Lua compiled without the system calls. This is done by many video games. İt’s 2025, there is no need to create new domain specific languages.
Or use embedded Lisp, like all the cool kids.
Yea like what? It’s been a big increase in workflow for me.
Lol you shared your personal experience and got downvoted… lmao even
Lemmy is propaganda against AI at this point. Not sure what paid for it but it has all the markers. Feels like being in the comment section of ny post articles.
Same energy as talking online about immigrants, nuclear energy or marvel
It’s using a community to post toxic and dystopian articles over and over again. Lemmy technology communitys are extremely vile. Not sure why it happened but it’s turned toxic
There isn’t propaganda against AI, it’s totally grassroots because companies are overselling it.
No it isn’t. There is 100% propaganda and media targeting communities to spread it.
The Gap between peoples opinion towards AI in everyday life vs people on Lemmy is massive and a good indicator that Lemmy is astroturfed to be toxic towards it. People who are influenced cannot see it, outsiders can though. It’s like seeing right wingers talk about immigrants. They’ll never be able to see how their news and media influence them. That is their truth and it’s as true to them as hate towards AI is towards lemmings in places like c/technology
Look at the articles posted, the headlines, the appeals used, the comments. It has all the markers of an Astro turf campaign.
By who? Your conspiracy theory makes no sense. Why would anyone want to do that.
You really can’t imagine why corporations and political groups who spend billions paying people to manufacture narratives and flood feeds might hate the idea of ordinary people suddenly having their own free, on-demand content factory, fact-checker, and megaphone?
That’s on both sides of the political spectrum. These AI tools are not just Google chat. You can build with them rapidly. Is it some revolutionary thing? No
But can it be a game changer in some areas? Absolutely.
They moved rapidly with the media on this. Compare headlines for AI to any other yellow journalistic topic. They’re identical
In favour of AI absolutely, against it, no I can’t. What group would want to disvalue AI, after all most of the big tech companies are developing their own. They would want people to use AI, that’s the only way they make a profit.
You keep providing these vague justifications for your belief but you never actually provide a concrete answer.
Which groups in particular do you think are paying people to astroturf with negative AI comments? Which actual organisations, which companys? Do you have evidence for this beyond “lots of people on a technically inclined forum don’t like it” because that seems to be a fairly self-selecting set. You are seeing patterns in the clouds and are insisting that they are meaningful.
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?
I mean… they responded in agreement to a comment that said it’s not an improvement. So it seems to me that it also would not increase the money they get out of it.
Like I spend less time trying to build formulas and I can create formulas and tools I normally wouldn’t with it because I can have a conversations about what I want to do and it provides suggestions.