Foundation model for tabular data slashes training from hours to seconds Move over ChatGPT and DALL-E: Spreadsheet data is getting its own foundation machine learning model, allowing users to immediately make inferences about new data points for data sets with up to 10,000 rows and 500 columns. One commentator said the development could be "revolutionary" for the speed at which users can make …
There have been a large number of surveys all concluding that there is a high error rate in spreadsheet calculations. There are other studies that have concluded that a major factor in the error rate is that there is often a casual approach to the creation of spreadsheets with little formal design or independent review.
They're already pretty much random number generators, but businesses seem wedded to their unreliable output. I doubt they'll be bothered by an additional layer of casual hallucinatory inferencing.
"Within a few months, Pito had come up with the fundamental idea at the core of Improv: that the raw data in a spreadsheet, the way that the user views the data, and the formulas used to perform calculations can all be separated from each other."
"Column letters, row numbers, and cell formulas, the main source of frustration for spreadsheet users, are all gone."
"In their place are rows and columns labeled in plain English, and an independent list of formulas that use those labels, making Improv, in essence, a relational spreadsheet."
https://instadeq.com/blog/posts/no-code-history-lotus-improv-spreadsheets-done-right-1991/
I look forward to the first expensive mistake that employees / politicians then try to blame on an unfettered AI tool.
The old IBM adage is still as relevant today as it was when it was written.
And we should not ever allow AI to take the blame here... only the person dumb enough to rely on the AI's answer without doing any analysis of their own.
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