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 formula."

No, I can't, you worthless pile of shit because THAT FORMULA DOESNT EXIST.

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.

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.

Our very own economic Butlerian jihad.

Give Microsoft some credit! Excel has been able to come up with wrong answers for decades. For example, reporting 1900 as a leap year.

Are you kidding? Microsoft has always been shit at math. According to Microsoft Excel, 2 + 2 = 12:04 AM Jan 1, 1900.

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.

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.

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.