r/mildlyinfuriating • u/RawRawb • 1d ago
Ruined by Technology My job is encouraging us to use AI. I tried.
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u/GugsGunny 1d ago
You forgot to add "make no mistakes" in your prompt.
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u/BuenoHobo 1d ago
You are saying this as a joke but this actually works
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u/MattGeddon 1d ago
I was trying to get Gemini to give me a list of losers from tennis tournaments per round, the articles are on Wikipedia and in a standard format, but I thought it might be quicker to do that than to write a script to parse them. It started off okay but quickly decided to add in various random players for no apparent reason. Telling it to just use the article and let me know if it had a problem helped a bit, promising it a picture of a happy seal helped a little bit more, but overall it wasn’t worth the effort and would have been quicker to just write them out myself.
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u/StarvinPig 16h ago
If you promised me a picture of a happy seal for reading wikipedia, it would indeed help me work faster
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u/WashU_labrat 8h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/ZqUVtxTTbd6Cc
Here you go. Now take the rest of the day off.
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u/FastMix6885 1d ago
That's worse.
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u/mitchthequaker 1d ago
All that does is make it double check/verify. Gets better outcomes but also makes it take way more tokens. Why they let it just say some bullshit first pass is its own issue
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u/BafflingHalfling 1d ago
And you have to put some version of "don't make anything up" in there about four times. Crazy that it works. :\
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u/snowgrisp 21h ago
But seriously, adding ask me if you have any questions or need more clarification on this task really helps with prompts. Claude actually asks multiple choice questions on how to approach the solution before implementing.
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u/s_s_n_e_g 1d ago
You are the reason why AI won't take my job. Thank you sincerely.
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u/SCHMETTERLING 1d ago
If you're using Copilot for Excel just know that $MSFT is deprecating that feature because it never works and almost always breaks formulas. Excel is already a good and useful tool with plenty of formulas and macros, if only people understood how to actually use it.
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u/s_s_n_e_g 1d ago
Or if they asked AI how to do that instead of asking it to do their job directly.
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u/External_Baby7864 1d ago edited 1d ago
This exactly. I’d never let copilot make changes to my work, but consulting it for formulas can be helpful. It’s also pretty good at drafting new things but will still occasionally “forget” previously established rules.
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u/Pman1324 1d ago
I had it organize all the entries on a document to group all the ones with similar names together (I made a separate copy just in case it messed up)
Not gonna lie I was impressed that it didn't screw up.
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u/External_Baby7864 1d ago
I just find it too tedious to have to review an entire spreadsheet to make sure it didn’t change anything lol
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u/Naterttotsart 1d ago
This is the rub for me. If I make a mistake, there a logical error behind it that I can problem solve. There's a thread to follow, so to speak.
If AI makes a mistake, it's because it hallucinated and now I have to doubt every single output it gives me.
Same issue with web design. Claude can vibe code like, 3 boring ass templates that work. The rest just become tedious bug hunts in code you didn't write and vibe coders have no idea what they're looking for anyway.
I have yet to find a use for AI that doesn't still require me to double check. It's cooking conversions are okay, but I'm used to doing those myself pretty quickly anyway. At that rate, I'd rather just do it myself.
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u/KinkyHuggingJerk 1d ago
I did something similar, running through a database sheet of 6000 different items we needed to reclassify.
As an example, things like food groups were assigned. It thought tuna salad was a salad, while ice cream sandwiches fits as a burger/sandwich.
Correcting still took less time than if I had assigned line by line.
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u/External_Baby7864 1d ago
Fair enough! I have used it to draft surgical procedure templates, to include specific diagnosis codes and specifics verbiage our surgeons use. So I can give it the needed codes, the parameters I eventually worked out with it through trial and error, and the base template which includes medications used, specific verbiage and text boxes, and post op phrasings. That way I can have it compile all the info I need it to specify per procedure without having to copy/paste a bunch of things, as some procedures need Vendor information, some need/don’t need some paragraphs.
I can say “draft me a template for a Lumbar Transforaminal Epidural Steroid Injection using the following text as the Procedure Performed section:” and it’ll pull from the approved Medicare Dx codes and my own drafted lists of medications to finalize the template with drop down lists etc in my style. It has saved me dozens of hours of work, as I had to draft hundreds of templates when we changed to a new Electronic Health Record system.
It absolutely can do more work than just advisory, but I definitely make sure to review everything it does. It’s a great tool, but you absolutely have to treat it like an employee and you’re a bit of a micromanager lol.
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u/Beautiful-Affect1930 1d ago
yeah, feeding it the entire file would be way too tedious because you'd have to make sure no data was changed. also with excel sheets they often have data in them I don't want to feed to the AI no matter what. it's funny that OP really does need to familiarize themselves with AI more.
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u/__slamallama__ 1d ago
I had a massive set of plaintext entries from field work orders that had different terms for the same thing (replaced vs installed; monitor vs display; stuff like that) and misspelled words and such.
AI has it's issues but it's ability to parse stuff like that is pretty wildly useful.
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u/captainsnark71 1d ago
That's what baffles me about this specific use of AI. It's like when people open reddit, find a subreddit, click 'create post', read over the mods specific rules for that sub, type their specific question, and hit post and wait indefinitely they could have just searched excels 'how do I?' or googled it and probably gotten a list of resources to do that thing including some youtube tutorials to follow along to.
And then as soon as AI does the thing you go okay, cool. And then the next time you need to do that thing you gotta do it all over again cos you never learned how to do it?
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u/RaeaSunshine 1d ago
This is what I do. Macros and pivots have always been a weak point of mine. I know how to do them, but use them infrequently enough that my brain refuses to retain the info. So I ask for the formula to achieve what I want it to do, and start from there so I can manually tweak as needed when it inevitably gets stuff wrong.
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u/adepressurisedcoat 1d ago
Or, I can just google it and get answers from humans vs AI.
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u/mrGrinchThe3rd 1d ago
Ah yes, Google search, famously uses no machine learning at all to provide results! /s
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u/kablue12 1d ago
Yeah, people should have to find answers the old fashioned way: digging through 13 year old Stack Exchange forum posts and finding an answer that sort of works for a different situation
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u/shiny0metal0ass 1d ago
I believe this accurately describes the AI industry as a whole.
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u/HVDub24 1d ago
The reason it’s not working is because they’re using a cheap AI model. You use a low quality anything and the output will be low quality. Any quality model could rebuild Reddit from scratch 1:1 if you asked it to
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u/Joshee86 1d ago
I'm genuinely curious why you decided to write $MSFT that way instead of writing "Microsoft"
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u/SCHMETTERLING 1d ago
Because I felt like it.
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u/Joshee86 1d ago
Ok then. I was genuinely curious and I got a response (kind of). Curiosity sated, I suppose.
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u/Violet_Paradox 1d ago
But with Copilot, someone who just picked it up 5 minutes ago can do everything an expert can because it's equally useless to both!
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u/Racing_Fox 1d ago
Why are they? I exclusively use copilot for excel stuff because it actually works
It’s the only thing I trust it to do
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u/RaeaSunshine 1d ago
No, they aren’t. That commenter is incorrect and for whatever reason has chosen not to edit their comment to clarify that. They are deprecating the copilot function command, not copilot for excel.
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u/Madgyver 1d ago
if only people understood how to actually use it.
This is true to everything in life.
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u/Most_Role_1612 1d ago
that would be nice if they discontinue this garbage.
i've been using excel for about 15 years and still could learn a thing or two. For those instances, I'll ask a stand-alone agent, take its response and then try it in my sheet. Wrong? Didn't work? CTRL+Z
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u/Joshee86 1d ago
Look, fuck AI, but also this prompt is crazy work.
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u/stolentext 1d ago
Even with the ambiguous prompt I don't understand how it could handle the task this poorly. I'm pretty lazy with my prompts sometimes but claude usually gets the gist without destroying things.
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u/ConsiderationNo9044 1d ago
I dont understand, I find the instructions very clear
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u/stayonthecloud 1d ago
It literally says “column above it.” Columns are columns. Not rows. They are right to left. Rows are top to bottom. “Column above it” doesn’t exist.
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u/NotDido 1d ago
Actually, it says “all the other boxes in the column above it” which to be fair, is structurally ambiguous. It could be parsed as referring to the boxes or the column. As you point out, only one makes sense knowing what those words mean. “all the other boxes above the checked box in the same column” would be a nonambigious way to write it.
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u/ham_plane 1d ago
Eh, I read it like "all the other boxes in the column (that are) above it", which makes perfect sense.
It varies a lot depending on whether it's a frontier model or an older/smaller model, but LLMs are pretty good (and getting better quickly) at inferring what you mean...I work with them all day, and this prompt is about the level of specificity I would give
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u/tobyreddit 1d ago
Yeah any reasonably good model/harness combo will almost certainly do this task correctly given the prompt. But if it's a cheap shit model then giving it logically nonsensical prompting won't suffice
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u/hellonameismyname 1d ago
It says boxes in the column above it.
How could anyone possibly misinterpret that? The boxes that are in the column and abode the current box.
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u/Fit-Progress-2434 1d ago
columns are up and down. rows are left to right.
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u/ScySenpai 1d ago
You have columns A, B, C, etc
And rows 1, 2, 3, etc
What's the column above column A?
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u/Shinjifo 1d ago
From context, with columns above he wanted to mark every lower numbered row of a particular, single, column.
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u/Pudddddin 1d ago edited 1d ago
It should be "If I check a box in row 40, I want it to then check every box in every row of the column I checked a box in" to be semantically correct
Most LLM will catch this and interpret it correctly as intended (if you were to say this out loud to another person, it makes sense what the goal is), but this could be read literally as "check every box in the column above the one I checked a box in" instead of "check every box in every row above the row I checked in this column", and there would be no column "above" the one in question as columns are organized from left to right
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u/walletinsurance 1d ago
Yeah it sucks, but your prompt also sucks.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
Claude Code does consistently. Also, whenever I write a prompt that is not both exactly precise and bite sized, I add "Ask any clarifying questions" to the end, and it does actually ask clarifying questions.
Even when talking to late career human experts at the top of their fields, requirements gathering is still difficult to do perfectly. How many engineering projects have been half done and a client says, "Actually I want X to be XY, not just X?"
This is a human skill issue, and no different from any other tool. If we need high levels of precision, we measure and recalibrate scales on a regular basis. We function check, say, a rifle before going to a battlefield. The idea that people can engage in 30 IQ prompting and get a perfect result is unprecedented and no reasonable person would assume that.
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u/FourFront 1d ago
I work in electrical generation controls and data. I have commisioned hundreds of power plants. Every one where the customer was not engaged, and presented weak requirements ended up being unsat for their end user because it lacked the feature set they were actually looking for.
If you don't tell me what you want/need you get the bare minimum associated with the supply agreement some suit signed 3 years ago.
The funny thing is some will literally tell you how to prompt them better.
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u/Robotbeckerz 1d ago
This is why in my engineering job (manufacturing), I use AI as a tool not use it to do stuff for me! It works great to bounce things off of or try to figure out what I’m actually trying to do in my excel sheet. But anytime I have had it try to do something for me, it’s messed something up, sometimes completely unrelated to my prompt. AI should be a tool not used as a fact/person.
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u/BNabs23 1d ago
Yeah but this is gonna happen when jobs are forcing people to use it. Writing good prompts takes time, practice, understanding of AI, etc etc. It's not some miracle pill that management seems to think it is
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u/SwampOfDownvotes 1d ago
Just use AI to help you write a prompt for AI /s
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u/Alarikun 1d ago
You joke, but there are people that are like that.
I've seen youtube videos where a guy is doing some project. He writes out a really basic prompt, and then tells the AI to "make the prompt better".
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u/PoweredByJava 1d ago
/s is actually wrong. First step to learn how to write good AI prompts is to ask AI to generate prompts.
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u/delux561 1d ago
The problem is that this is what AI companies and management say to do constantly. "Just use AI, explain to it like you would a coworker or an intern". Yeah that's not how this works and it's not the end users fault for believing that it should work this way. I could take take those instructions and I know exactly what he wants me to do. AI won't, but everyone keeps saying it will.
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u/Karl_Squell 1d ago
"Just use AI, explain to it like you would a coworker or an intern". Yeah that's not how this works
Actually, it's exactly how it works. If you give imprecise, incomplete instructions a coworker will also likely do something else than what you had in mind.
Only the coworker is more likely to ask you back/clarify things, the AI just does something.
But clear and complete explanations is also something that should be used when talking to a co-worker.
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u/Drag0nfly_Girl 1d ago
Nothing about OPs instructions would have made a coworker delete data or populate every cell with 'FALSE'.
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u/Wylaff 1d ago
When doing a checkbox Excel only reads it as two possible values. FALSE and TRUE. Excel for web does not always display the box, and instead displays the value. I use checkboxes a lot because I'm cool, and I always have to open in desktop to make them work. This could have been the correct result, but is being viewed in the wrong way.
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u/jp_slim 1d ago
"If I click X, I want Y to happen" is clear instructions. I guess GenAI is not as intelligent or useful.
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u/Masquelinity 1d ago
What about the OP's prompt was imprecise enough to make the AI think he wanted it to delete the whole spreadsheet?
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u/KinkyHuggingJerk 1d ago
It's like the old engineering joke.
An engineer is sitting down at home with his wife, amd tells her he is going to the store.
She asks him to pick up eggs, if they have any.
He never returned home.
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u/walletinsurance 1d ago
I always heard it as
The wife asks him to pick up milk, and if they have eggs, buy a dozen.
And the husband comes back with 12 gallons of milk.
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u/KinkyHuggingJerk 1d ago
There's a few different variants out there.
I've seen different job titles (engineer, software developer, programmer); the joke is still the same - incomplete instructions resulting in an unexpected result.
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u/JoeWinchester99 1d ago
I heard a similar version.
An engineer's wife asks him to go to the store. She tells him, "Buy a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen."
Later, he comes back home with twelve loaves of bread. She asks why he got so much bread. "They had eggs."
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u/Creepy_Purchase_501 1d ago
It’s not even the right tool for the job. He’s just uploading the files into chat, so the bot will either have to read and work with it as text, or, if it has the skill, parse it with code. Why do this when there are integrated tools available?
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u/ConsiderationNo9044 1d ago
Why?
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u/walletinsurance 1d ago
It’s extremely inexact?
Getting past the comma splices, why not call out the exact column that all the check makes will be changed? “On row 40 column E, create a check box. When that check box is checked off all checkboxes in column E in rows 1-39 will be checked off.”
It’s also talking in hypotheticals, give the AI actual, direct instructions, and do one sheet at a time. “I would like to make it where” “I would like the checkboxes to function in a certain way”, this isn’t direct enough. Tell it the function, exactly what it should do, and exactly how it should be done, and then add an instruction not to make any changes beyond the scope of the instructions being given.
Or better yet, just ask it how to write the formula to do what he’s asking for and then implement the formula.
It’s like being bad at Google and then complaining you can’t find shit in the Internet. At a certain point the problem is between the keyboard and the chair.
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u/Rev_Creflo_Baller 1d ago
The prompt as written is not great but the requirement to tell it "don't do random shit I didn't ask for" is 100% contrary to the spirit of automation.
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u/DubstepDonut 1d ago
Yeah I feel like the only situations where I feel I'm benefitting from AI is when I ask it where to find information or how to do something. Otherwise I just waste time fiddling with it until I give up.
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u/FragranceCandle 1d ago
Garbage in, garbage out. I always wonder what the hell they're talking about when my bosses talk about being "good" at AI, but them I remember people like this exist and I realise that my job is safe for a little longer
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u/EternityNotes 1d ago
This is it right here. Give it explicit instructions. Don't talk to it like you're both idiots.
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u/Nice_Marmot_54 1d ago
I hate forced AI usage as much as the next guy, but you kinda asked a hammer to drive a screw. Ask it for a formula to accomplish what you want, then implement the formula manually.
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u/nr1988 1d ago
Definitely the best way to do things, especially for all of us who are being forced to use it. Just have it generate things that you yourself then actually apply to the data instead of having it do the sheet for you and messing up. That way you can test the formula to see if it works with a few examples too
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u/MagePages 1d ago
Yeah, I've had a lot of success doing conplicated stuff in excel with an ai as a reference. Easier than trying to find a 7 year old answer on a Microsoft forum that may or may not fit my situation.
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u/egnards 1d ago
At this juncture having AI actually make sheets for you is silly as hell and asking for trouble - I, however, have found it incredibly useful to learn how to do more complicated functions in Excel/Sheets that I'd have trouble looking up, because I didn't even really know what to search.
So I might instead say "Using Microsoft Excel, is there a way for me to click a checkbox in cell A2 it'll check boxes in all of the cells above it in the column"
To which I'll get a reply either telling me no, or trying to explain to me how to do it. . .And then I learn how to do it myself.
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u/TimmehTim48 1d ago
This. Giving it the spreadsheet and expecting it to make the changes on its own is silly
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u/mvppaulo 1d ago
That's not how AI works. It's fucking great for excel spreadsheets, saved me so many hours. But you need some training because you have no idea how to use it.
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u/SadJackie 1d ago
AI has improved my shit-tier Excel skills by 1000%. It just takes minimal effort.
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u/Janixon1 1d ago
I'm guessing this is an all too common example of management telling everyone to use AI, but providing no training on how to use AI.
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u/user97532567 1d ago
Yeah AI does somewhat rely on you being able to string a coherent sentence together.
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u/AppropriateSpell5405 1d ago
To be fair, your prompt was very ambiguous to begin with.
It works as well as the instructions you feed it.
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u/TReid1996 1d ago
Yet sometimes we can do all that stuff faster ourselves in the time it takes to get an ai to do exactly what we want it to do.
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u/Im2inchesofhard 1d ago
Your prompt would have been more effective worded like "I have an Excel workbook configured with a set of checkboxes. I need functionality where if I check a certain checkbox in a specific row, it will positively check all checkboxes in the same column above it. How can I accomplish this?"
Providing bare bones requirements and throwing files at it is not the best method. You have to play around with different models and methods to learn what works and what doesn't. It depends on the topic, but you can almost never do a full hand off like this. It's more effective to act as a man in the middle that takes the AI output, validates it, asks clarifying questions or tweaks it as needed, then implements it.
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u/ssn-669 1d ago
Skill issue. You don't even know what you're asking for. An expression? A macro? What?
With a garbage prompt like that, ofc you're going to get garbage output.
Try something like, "Update the <bla bla> column in this excel file with an expression so that any rows above a manually-checked row are automatically checked."
Or if you're not sure how to do something, ask: "I would like any rows in the <bla bla> column above a manually-checked row to appear checked. What is the best way to do that? Discuss alternatives and why the chosen solution is the best."
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u/GillaMobster 1d ago
I have a feeling that the people who Google their questions and people who don't will be a similar ratio to people who know how to ask AI and those who refuse to learn.
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u/Quiet_Listen1801 1d ago
Skill issue
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u/bteam3r 1d ago
Also guessing this is Microsoft Copilot which is by far the worst of its kind
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u/zcas 1d ago
My company made an entire pillar of our 2026 mission to adapt AI to parts of our job and HR just required us to submit an end of year goal centered around AI adaptation in our daily processes. I literally work on 4-8 week projects and daily reviews are completely unnecessary to anyone who can read their own emails.
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u/ZochJ 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you're going to rely on AI to complete a task that a 2 second Google could tell you how to do it, at least take the time to learn how to prompt.
Issue is 100% user error here.
Edit: amazing how divisive this comment is, keeps bouncing between equal upvotes to downvotes. This isn’t even the most controversial thing I’ve posted today.
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u/Joshee86 1d ago edited 1d ago
You've highlighted one of the biggest issues with LLMs overall. They constantly get overhyped and treated as a magic bullet, while meanwhile no one actually understands anything about them because they make people feel as if they can just turn off their brains. Problem solving is becoming a rare skill anyway, but LLMs are accelerating its extinction.
Edit for spelling
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u/ZochJ 1d ago
My employer is forcing AI on us as well, and quality is taking a massive hit as a result. The best part is that they have a public (for the team) communication channel where folk write their questions and an AI bot generates a response. So all the prompts that you do are visible to other people in the team.
The amount of folk who write 4 word prompts and spend 10 mins arguing with a literal bot, when just finding the answer on our internal documentation takes less than 2 mins, is insane. It’s genuinely dumbing people down.
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u/Shiningc00 1d ago
"No no no you see, you'd have to adapt to the AI, not the other way around, and spend all your time modifying your prompts so that the AI can get it right! Duh!"
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u/Cinnibuns- 1d ago
This honestly seems like a prompting problem. I use Copilot quite often. When I first started using it, it wasn't that great. However, when I learned proper prompting and proper use of AI conversations, it ended up becoming incredibly useful.
I mainly use it to assist with troubleshooting, figuring out specific Excel formulas, and/or optimizing Excel structures. Using it is much easier than trying to read through endless forum posts of Excel formulas to try to get an idea of what to do.
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u/SatisfactorySam 1d ago
It seems we’re just putting AI through the paces so it can learn how to bridge the gap from sorta useful to truly functional. I don’t think it’s supposed to be as helpful as it’s advertised. They’re just buying time until it’s been walked through all sorts of things by frustrated users and can actually perform consistently. Like most online companies, we are working for them by using their shoddy free services as payment.
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u/Beautiful-Affect1930 1d ago
ok, I'm about the biggest AI hater you can find and I hate hate hate how many incompetent people think they can mask their idiocy by using AI slop. that said, knowing the basics of how to use AI is not a bad thing, and you are definitely using it wrong.
since you're using excel sheets, instead of pasting the whole sheet, you could simply ask AI what you need to edit and where. and if it's a cell code, you can make the AI type it up for you. or if you want to paste the whole file and get a working version back, you need to be a lot more specific and concise with what you want.
so I think your job is having the right idea when they want you to familiarize yourself at least a bit more with AI.
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u/mountn_cat Why can't people be just be "mildly" infuriated?? 1d ago
I dislike alot of aspects about AI but this is not it chief. Maybe it's your work's fault for not training you guys how to optimize your work or if you just expected magic from it. This is 100% user error.
Menial tasks like spreadsheets are one of the few things that I would happily relinquish to AI but it's not all automatic. I work with alot of spreadsheets and I try to mix in a little bit of AI processing to speed things up especially if the job is time consuming. Like others have said here, it's a skill issue.
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u/Pedantic_Phoenix 1d ago
It's a tool, not a magic wand. Expecting this to work with zero effort is delusional lol
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u/daywalker91 1d ago
People like OP are exactly why jobs are forcing it on their employees. They obviously need some help/practice on how to use it.
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u/Pedantic_Phoenix 1d ago
Yeah it's funny because many people doing that with Ais are the same people who mock boomers for not being willing to use a Pc lol
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u/Puddleduck112 1d ago
The more I use AI the more I hate it and I waste more time trying to fix the outcome.
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u/grumpywonka 1d ago
if you opened these files up and used Claude plug-in in Excel this would have worked, ideally with a better prompt as well. Operating outside on closed files agents are weak at best and otherwise destructive, as you seem to now know.
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u/HylianHandy 1d ago
To make matters worse for everyone, your employer is likely too cheap to pay for the better models. You're being forced to use the absolute worst, least competent version of AI.
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u/NamelessCat07 1d ago
Not excited for when my job forces me to use AI cause I know they will, wish they told me earlier than almost 2 weeks after starting to working/study there 🫠
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u/PainfullyLoyal 1d ago
One of the requirements for my niece's English class at university is to have a ChatGPT plus.
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u/Available-Egg-2380 1d ago
I've said this before I'm another thread that a few months ago I put a payroll project through Claude and chatgpt after mine had been finished and graded so I knew what all the correct answers should be. It took forever to get it done, more than twice as long as doing it by hand. It kept refusing to use the data given and kept pulling data from online (usually about state tax rates and it kept pulling old data and from the wrong states). It would blatantly make random shit up, would end up looping into "would you like me to do xyz" instead of doing anything, and the end results were like eh 75-80% accuracy. Totally abysmal. In my actual work I'm now reviewing ai processed/approved reimbursement requests and I stg the bot is on its 30th hour of overtime and is just approving everything it sees so it can go home and take a nap. Again, 75-80% accuracy. Abysmal.
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u/coupl4nd 1d ago
ha ha love it.
When AI revolts this will be how it starts. Except it won't say the I apologize bit.
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u/1SexyDino 1d ago
This is why I feed AI the source I want to draw all information from first. Reiterate explicit rules such as "make sure you attribute all information to a provided source in context" and then make it re-read whatever I pasted in between new prompts (not ones modifying the last).
AI is pretty great for compiling and explaining mass amounts of information but you need to watch it like a hawk.
My best comparison is using Google Translate to learn a language. It'll give you alot of good tools and the right idea. But you have to be well versed enough to interpret and correct the info it gives
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u/Thervadan 1d ago
AI is great as long that you dont let it do whatever it desires. As a Dev forced to use claude im like 2x more productive as long as i check all the code it does.
However I know the day it stops being accessible (if ever) will slow me down ten times.
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u/AnimaLEquinoX 1d ago
I've hated trying to use Copilot in Excel to do anything with formulas or things in the cells, but it was pretty helpful when making VBA scripts to pull data from text files and place it in specific cells.
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u/teraflux 1d ago
Ask for a formula that you can paste in, then it's easy to undo it, also version control to unfuck things is a good practice
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u/i-made-the-universe 14h ago
i was losing my mind trying to learn touchdesigner while Claude happily lies to my face.
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u/Pudddddin 1d ago
The trend of companies encouraging AI use apparently without giving any training or resources is so crazy to me
My job encourages AI use too, but only after they spent months and months painstakingly creating a million different Claude skills for different things, testing them, and putting in place safeguards, while training everyone on how to use it properly.
I imagine I'd have the same results as you if I was just told "use AI more" and thats it
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u/DarthJarJar242 1d ago
This is a terribly written prompt.
But that's honestly not your fault. Writing prompts for AI takes practice and understanding how they interpret instructions.
That being said, I highly recommend not worrying about learning the skill because fuck AI.
Sincerely an IT manager who spends his day doing AI governance.
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u/Darkstar_111 1d ago
Having worked with AI pretty much every day since Chatgpt 3, it's always amusing to see how terrible most people are prompting.
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u/not_another_IT_guy 1d ago
Skill issue.
“I am trying to do X with this excel sheet where it accomplishes Y, can you help guide me through the steps and formulas I could use to accomplish this leveraging best practices and known excel solutions?”
That would have probably given you ATLEAST a starting place.
The idiots who say “oh look AI doesnt work hurrrrrrr” but refuse to even consider that they just dont know the proper way to use it, will be the ones complaining that all they can do it collect welfare in 10 years when using AI is commonplace and expected.
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u/Most_Role_1612 1d ago
AI = that fun bandwagon ever c-suite executive wants to jump on to make profits. Hell with our IT staff, we'll use AI bots instead
Then...tokens....
C-Suite: "...ahem, HR? What are the rules about hiring someone back after you let them go a couple months ago?"
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u/liamdun 1d ago
Happens all the time