560
Very normal and safe
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
560 points (100.0% liked)
Memes
15902 readers
748 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
It pains me to defend an AI feature, but this whole tweet is disingenuous and stupid. The documentation for
=COPILOT()says a few things which are relevant to understand what we're seeing here:In this case the user has not provided copilot any cells to look at, so they're just asking what the typical answer on the Internet is for the request "sum the numbers above". And the sum of numbers above things are apparently often 15.
Keep in mind that if you allow a user to make this mistake, people will DEFINITELY make this mistake. A lot.
And if that's true, just imagine something any more compex, that could get lost amid the rest of the slop for a long time
Is the analogy like giving access to a nuclear reactor to users and giving them access to AI to help them run the nuclear plant by allowing the AI to give users the most common answers and responses into how to run a nuclear power plant.
Every job is just some sort of troubleshooting, it just makes it harder to do when your manual is making stuff up
That is true for a lot of things, particularly every AI feature ever.
Dont you just tell the AI to make no mistakes
.... You aren't supposed to use it for math.... In excel? What is the point?
People do all sorts of weird non-math stuff in Excel. The stated use-case for this feature is stuff that operates on text. Say for example you fill column A with quotes from your customers about your product. Then you can tell Copilot to provide a summary of each row in column B, and whether the sentiment is positive or negative in column C. You could aggregate the results as well.
There are better tools for that sort of thing, but a lot of people really love their Excel hammer, and they see nails everywhere.
But haven't the makers of Excel said in the past that you shouldn't use Excel for non-math stuff because that's not what it's designed for? Now their putting in a "tool" that's useless for math stuff?
I don't know, I'm not that deep in Excel lore. But sometimes things change.
Is there a layperson-accessible way to paste a large number of email adresses and concatenate them with "; " that's more recommended than spreadsheet software?.
And what do you need AI to do with that list?
Not AI but it is non-math stuff in Excel.
True, I did forget that it might have been useful for me in one very specific instance where there was a comments section in one of our excel forms and I wanted to summarize the most common words mentioned in those comments. Couldn't figure out how at the time but this could potentially have figured it out. Not sure I would trust the accuracy of it's result though
If it's "not supposed to be used for math" then it should pop a modal that says "I don't do math".
Big part of the problem with AI features is that way too many people believe they are silver bullet for everything and they are marketed like that.
Computer savvy people know better ways of doing math and can figure out that context is needed.
Overwhelming majority of people, including bosses and managers, are too lazy and ignorant to care about the points you mention.
This is true for every field: people knowledgeable in that field know that there are better ways to do it then AI and easily spot the errors AI makes. AI only looks good in fields you are ignorant about.
The issue isn't about what it can and can't do, it's that it is CONSTANTLY attempting to step in and "fix" my spreadsheet in bizarrely inane ways. Why won't it give me the "shut up and stay the fuck out of my way" option? There is no option to remove or silence copilot. That damn thing follows my cursor like a ring wraith after Frodo. It has already fucked up more than one of my spreadsheets without asking or being asked. If I hadn't been paying attention, I might not have caught the absolutely bat shit insane edits it was making to simple and correct functions I'd already entered. No, copilot you don't know what I'm doing. Clippy was less intrusive.
The reason they have Copilot act without you requesting it is so they can show their investors Copilot is being used.
That sounds like a different thing than
=COPILOT (). There are like 75 completely different things all called Copilot, because Microsoft are masters at naming things.if you're not supposed to use it for math, maybe it shouldn't produce numbers/formulas.