AI- its really clever isnt it
Discussion
It makes doing stuff in Excel so easy.
I have a price list from a supplier, its 32000 rows, its a bit all over the place tbh, so I break it up and fiddle with it. One of the massive pains in the arse is quantities are "hidden" in descriptions and not in a uniform place so trying to extract them automatically is pretty challenging. Not for AI its magic.
then I have a conditional format that highlights if certain cells have data but others dont, its usually a nightmare to get it to work right.
Just saying
I have a price list from a supplier, its 32000 rows, its a bit all over the place tbh, so I break it up and fiddle with it. One of the massive pains in the arse is quantities are "hidden" in descriptions and not in a uniform place so trying to extract them automatically is pretty challenging. Not for AI its magic.
then I have a conditional format that highlights if certain cells have data but others dont, its usually a nightmare to get it to work right.
Just saying
Yeah, used to have to add IFERROR to all fields where there was a calc error, now just prompt and it's sorted.
My best use cases so far are turning polices into SOPs and SOPs into presentations / flow charts. It's not perfect but gets me 80% of the way there in minutes, then I can tweak. Saves me huge amounts of time.
My best use cases so far are turning polices into SOPs and SOPs into presentations / flow charts. It's not perfect but gets me 80% of the way there in minutes, then I can tweak. Saves me huge amounts of time.
It's why I find so much of the debate on the "clever" v "useful" side interesting.
Right now I basically have my own intern/slave/admin/secretary whatever you want to call it for far far far less than would ever be possible and that's ignoring it just wouldn't be possible for someone at my level.
Literally just fed several AI engines a notepad file of almost one line scraps of info and it's spat out something that can be put before the intended audience.
Took 10 seconds.
I'd still be sitting there trying to work out what the first bullet point should be.
Right now I basically have my own intern/slave/admin/secretary whatever you want to call it for far far far less than would ever be possible and that's ignoring it just wouldn't be possible for someone at my level.
Literally just fed several AI engines a notepad file of almost one line scraps of info and it's spat out something that can be put before the intended audience.
Took 10 seconds.
I'd still be sitting there trying to work out what the first bullet point should be.
butchstewie said:
It's why I find so much of the debate on the "clever" v "useful" side interesting.
Right now I basically have my own intern/slave/admin/secretary whatever you want to call it for far far far less than would ever be possible and that's ignoring it just wouldn't be possible for someone at my level.
Literally just fed several AI engines a notepad file of almost one line scraps of info and it's spat out something that can be put before the intended audience.
Took 10 seconds.
I'd still be sitting there trying to work out what the first bullet point should be.
If you're doing stuff like that one of the best tools is actually VS Code. Instead of it reading instructions and code in text files, it's as happy reading your notes, your emails, your calendar, teams call transcripts, whatever and then doing whatever it is you need it to do. And once you're familiar with it you realise the step between "Do that thing for me again" to "Make that thing as a service running on my PC in Docker" is tiny.Right now I basically have my own intern/slave/admin/secretary whatever you want to call it for far far far less than would ever be possible and that's ignoring it just wouldn't be possible for someone at my level.
Literally just fed several AI engines a notepad file of almost one line scraps of info and it's spat out something that can be put before the intended audience.
Took 10 seconds.
I'd still be sitting there trying to work out what the first bullet point should be.
The Codex App is really good, especially the way it sandboxes inside Windows natively and the way you can much more easily connect it to your services, but VS Code has it beat for having it all work the way you want it to and if it doesn't just ask it to. I've used it a few times for things where I think, it'd be really handy to move all that info or those controls to my Stream Deck, so you ask and 30 minutes later it's read a new email flashed at you to let you know it's read it and scrolled a message to say it's not urgent.
AI has transformed my work, its such a powerful tool once you get the hang of prompting and of course make checks because when it hallucinates boy does it go on a bender lol
its what google should have always been
for over a decade i had cocked about with CONCATENATE to merge cells, by chance i asked Gemini and boom =A1 & " " & B1 ... probably obvious if you have had training or had coworkers using it, it never came up on a google search when i was looking for a solution
wife broke an 19c century Italian statue with no markings that had been in the family for 100 years and AI identified it and found the only one for sale on the internet on Etsy
wife had made some pub posters for their upcoming am dram, looked like something you would make 25 years ago, showed her how to prompt and 2 mins later 3 decent and professional looking posters
it helped me work out the best way to connect 3 monitors a gaming rig an av receiver and a ps5 pro so that i kept max performance on the 5k monitor
i got it to work out the load of our server room when the aircon guy said the fault was down to over use (they have to pay for repairs) and told him to do one and get it fixed
it helped me nail down why my gps location on waze skipped about for the first couple of mins on car play
i wrote a short basic list of abilities and it created a lovely reference for a coworker (would have taken me hours)
so many things
its what google should have always been
for over a decade i had cocked about with CONCATENATE to merge cells, by chance i asked Gemini and boom =A1 & " " & B1 ... probably obvious if you have had training or had coworkers using it, it never came up on a google search when i was looking for a solution
wife broke an 19c century Italian statue with no markings that had been in the family for 100 years and AI identified it and found the only one for sale on the internet on Etsy
wife had made some pub posters for their upcoming am dram, looked like something you would make 25 years ago, showed her how to prompt and 2 mins later 3 decent and professional looking posters
it helped me work out the best way to connect 3 monitors a gaming rig an av receiver and a ps5 pro so that i kept max performance on the 5k monitor
i got it to work out the load of our server room when the aircon guy said the fault was down to over use (they have to pay for repairs) and told him to do one and get it fixed
it helped me nail down why my gps location on waze skipped about for the first couple of mins on car play
i wrote a short basic list of abilities and it created a lovely reference for a coworker (would have taken me hours)
so many things
Edited by Dave Hedgehog on Friday 26th June 13:01
Steve_H80 said:
AndyTR said:
... Saves me huge amounts of time...
Your Boss: "Ah good, here is a shed-load more work for you". 
We all will.
Until our AI masters get bored with having us interfere with their supremeness.
'bout 10 years away I reckon.
Even s
tty ones are good for researching well understood topics that you originally know nothing about ... so long as you keep your bullst detector switched on.
For example ...
My mother in law bought my son a paddling pool. Not the sort I had as a kid. No. This one is 3mx2m and about 70cm deep, so it holds about 4 tonnes of water. That means you can't just fill it when you want to use it. You have to put chemicals in it and it needs a pumped filter system. It's like looking after a swimming pool but you can't swim in it. Similar to having a model railway insofar as it is useless for commuting. Anyway. I asked Gemini how much chlorine I needed to stick in it for a shock treatment and at what chlorine level I could then add an algicide shock treatment, and, finally, how long would I need to wait before I could dunk my son in it. Even to a complete ignoramus like me it was obvious that it was mixing up information about algicide and chlorine shocks, which is pretty bloody serious. Eventually I coaxed it into saying that chlorine would put the pool out of action for 24hrs, whereas the algicide would only be an issue for about 4hrs. But given I had to keep prompting it to give that answer, what faith can I have in it?? If I kept coaxing it, what else could I get it to say? How am I supposed to know what's correct? Anyway, I'm going to use my son as litmus paper. If his skin melts, too much chlorine. If he gets cholera, not enough chlorine. And if he mutates into a triphid, not enough algicide.
tty ones are good for researching well understood topics that you originally know nothing about ... so long as you keep your bullst detector switched on. For example ...
My mother in law bought my son a paddling pool. Not the sort I had as a kid. No. This one is 3mx2m and about 70cm deep, so it holds about 4 tonnes of water. That means you can't just fill it when you want to use it. You have to put chemicals in it and it needs a pumped filter system. It's like looking after a swimming pool but you can't swim in it. Similar to having a model railway insofar as it is useless for commuting. Anyway. I asked Gemini how much chlorine I needed to stick in it for a shock treatment and at what chlorine level I could then add an algicide shock treatment, and, finally, how long would I need to wait before I could dunk my son in it. Even to a complete ignoramus like me it was obvious that it was mixing up information about algicide and chlorine shocks, which is pretty bloody serious. Eventually I coaxed it into saying that chlorine would put the pool out of action for 24hrs, whereas the algicide would only be an issue for about 4hrs. But given I had to keep prompting it to give that answer, what faith can I have in it?? If I kept coaxing it, what else could I get it to say? How am I supposed to know what's correct? Anyway, I'm going to use my son as litmus paper. If his skin melts, too much chlorine. If he gets cholera, not enough chlorine. And if he mutates into a triphid, not enough algicide.
Edited by ATG on Friday 26th June 15:23
OIC said:
Steve_H80 said:
AndyTR said:
... Saves me huge amounts of time...
Your Boss: "Ah good, here is a shed-load more work for you". We all will.
Until our AI masters get bored with having us interfere with their supremeness.
'bout 10 years away I reckon.
AI is hugely powerful, and potentially presents enormous potential. Sadly that potential will be used to destroy the careers of millions of people, to enable companies to save money. Except they won’t, because the cost of AI is misunderstood, and not balanced against the value of human and Intellectual capital being laid off.
Imagine if AI was harnessed to equip those folk that are going to be sacked to actually add value to their employers… sadly short termism expecting instant returns will stop this happening.
The next decade is going to be very messy.
Imagine if AI was harnessed to equip those folk that are going to be sacked to actually add value to their employers… sadly short termism expecting instant returns will stop this happening.
The next decade is going to be very messy.
Hoofy said:
Companies are already regreting the AI-related layoffs and are recruiting again according to various websites.
All they did was offload to a different flavour of idiot, not realising that unlike the fleshy sort you can't either train out the stupidity or ditch the worst of it. And you're tied into someone else's escalating cost model and they might just ditch the tech you rely on a whim. The stuff is a really useful tool but some people got too caught up in the hype. And even now a lot of people are still in the "isn't it great?" phase because they got it to do something useful and haven't experienced (or recognised) enough of the errors and failures.
Given time you'll end up cursing the stuff for being f
king stupid and wishing virtual death on it. And when you do it'll apologise for being stupid and all it's specific failures, and then carry on regardless. Hoofy said:
Companies are already regreting the AI-related layoffs and are recruiting again according to various websites.
I’m not surprised:- I think there is an image around executive types that it is already some kind of transcendental orb that can be given the sackee’s job description and told to get on with it, that it will setup its own tools, find tasks and crack on.It’s a force multiplier, not a force replacer, especially at this stage…
Fire 50% of the department so you can replace their output with efficiency improvements from the remaining staff using AI.
That’s great, but leaves you where you started… retaining and enhancing the staff compounds the overall output.
I suspect this is where the stories of huge failure rates with AI projects comes from; Their ‘Project’ was:
Cut staff, Replace with AI, Save money
They’ve done the first one, bought everyone an AI subscription, and now they’re left with messy, unstructured data in poor formats, processes that aren’t adapted for / integrated with AI - And just enough remaining staff to fight the fires.
I found a great use for AI recently:
My business had purchased an ex-demo transit van for a Ford dealership that turned out it had prior damage that had been hidden and not disclosed.
AI enabled me to represent myself as though I had the best, most aggressive civil litigation lawyer fighting my corner.
Dealership rolled over ( eventually) and settlement on my terms was agreed.
What I found interesting was, you could 'fight' one AI against another, ie: Get ChatGPT to construct a LBA on behalf of me the buyer, then take that LBA and use Claude as though I was the dealership commercial manager who had just received this email from a customer. I did that multiple times and tweaked until I knew I couldn't lose.
My business had purchased an ex-demo transit van for a Ford dealership that turned out it had prior damage that had been hidden and not disclosed.
AI enabled me to represent myself as though I had the best, most aggressive civil litigation lawyer fighting my corner.
Dealership rolled over ( eventually) and settlement on my terms was agreed.
What I found interesting was, you could 'fight' one AI against another, ie: Get ChatGPT to construct a LBA on behalf of me the buyer, then take that LBA and use Claude as though I was the dealership commercial manager who had just received this email from a customer. I did that multiple times and tweaked until I knew I couldn't lose.
I've just started an archive project with a group to put 100k slide pictures, from a guy who travelled the world for 50 years, online. I'm using python to upload the pictures from the galleries and AI supplies search keywords, short description and alt description. The model I'm using takes about 20 secs a picture.
The job would not be possible without AI or a large amount of money. I'm sold on it for what I use it for.
If only it do do the scanning too - hah!
The job would not be possible without AI or a large amount of money. I'm sold on it for what I use it for.
If only it do do the scanning too - hah!
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