The “AI” bubble is showing cracks, and Microsoft ruins Excel

It’s not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of companies’ generative AI programs have failed to earn any profit whatsoever. Tech stocks tanked Tuesday, regarding broader fears that this bubble may have swelled about as large as it can go. Surely, there will be no wider repercussions for normal people if and when Nvidia, currently propping up the market like a load-bearing matchstick, finally runs out of fake companies to sell chips to. But getting in under the wire, before we’re all bartering gas in the desert and people who can read become the priestly caste, is Microsoft, with the single most “Who asked for this?” application of AI I’ve seen yet: They’re jamming it into Excel.
↫ Barry Petchesky at Defector

I’m going to skip over the mounting and palpable uneasiness that the cracks in the “AI” bubble are starting to form, and go right to that thing about Excel. Quite possible one of the most successful applications of all time, and the backbone of countless small, medium, and even large business, it started out as a Mac program to supplant Microsoft’s MultiPlan, which was being clobbered in the market by Lotus 1-2-3. It wasn’t until version 2.0 that it came to Intel, as an application that contained a Windows runtime. It was a port of Excel 2.0 for the Mac.

Anyway, it took a few years, but Excel took over the market, and I don’t think any other spreadsheet program has ever even remotely threatened its market dominance ever since. Well, not until Google Sheets arrived on the scene – it’s hard to find any useful numbers, but it seems Google Sheets is insanely popular in all kinds of sectors, at least according to Statista. They claim Google’s online office suite has a 49% market share, with Microsoft Office sitting at 29%. I have no idea how that translates into the usage shares of Google Sheets versus Microsoft Excel, but it’s a sign of the times, regardless.

One of the things you’d expect a spreadsheet to do is calculate numbers and tabulate data, and to do so accurately. The core competency of a computer is to compute, do stuff with numbers, and we’d flip out collective shit if our computers failed to do such basic arithmetic. So, what if I told you that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to add “AI” to Excel, and as such, has to add a disclaimer that this means Excel may not do basic arithmetic correctly?

COPILOT uses AI and can give incorrect responses.

To ensure reliability and to use it responsibly, avoid using COPILOT for:

Numerical calculations: Use native Excel formulas (e.g., SUM, AVERAGE, IF) for any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility.

Responses that require context other than the ranges provided: The COPILOT function only has access to the prompt and context provided to or referenced by the function. It does not have access to other data from your workbook, data from other files or enterprise information.

Lookups based on data in your workbook: Use XLOOKUP to look up data based on a table or range.

Tasks with legal, regulatory or compliance implications: Avoid using AI-generated outputs for financial reporting, legal documents, or other high-stakes scenarios.

Recent or real-time data: The function is non-deterministic and may return different results on recalculation. Currently, the model’s knowledge is limited to information before June 2024.

↫ Microsoft’s Excel COPILOT FUNCTION support document

Look, we can all disagree on the use of “AI”, where it makes sense, where it doesn’t, if it even does anything useful, and so on, but I would assume – for the world’s sake – that we can at least agree that using “AI” in an application used to do very important calculations for a lot of business is a really, really dumb idea? Is the person doing the bookkeeping in Excel at Windmill Restaurant, in Spearville, Kansas, properly aware of the limitations of “AI”, or are they not following technology that closely, and as such only hear the marketing and hype?

A spreadsheet should give accurate outcomes based on the input given by humans. The moment you let a confabulator loose on your spreadsheet, it ceases being a tool that can be used for anything even remotely serious. The fact that Microsoft is adding this nonsense to Excel and letting it loose on the unsuspecting public at large is absolutely wild to me, and I can assure you it’s going to have serious consequences for a lot of people. Microsoft, of course, will be able to point at the disclaimer buried in some random support document and absolve itself of any and all responsibility.

I’d like to point out that Lotus 1-2-3 probably still runs on Windows 11, for no reason at all.