Comment by causal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by causal | Hacker News Reader

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Seems everyone is speculating features instead of just reading TFA which does in fact list features:

- Get answers about any cell in seconds: Navigate complex models instantly. Ask Claude about specific formulas, entire worksheets, or calculation flows across tabs. Every explanation includes cell-level citations so you can verify the logic.

- Test scenarios without breaking formulas: Update assumptions across your entire model while preserving all dependencies. Test different scenarios quickly—Claude highlights every change with explanations for full transparency.

- Debug and fix errors: Trace #REF!, #VALUE!, and circular reference errors to their source in seconds. Claude explains what went wrong and how to fix it without disrupting the rest of your model.

- Build models or fill existing templates: Create draft financial models from scratch based on your requirements. Or populate existing templates with fresh data while maintaining all formulas and structure.

If this can reliably deal with the REF, VALUE, and NA problems, it'll be worth it for that alone.

Oh and deal with dates before 1900.

Excel is a gift from God if you stay in its lane. If you ever so slightly deviate, not even the Devil can help you.

But maybe, juuuuust maybe, AI can?

"not even Devil can help you.

But maybe, juuuuust maybe, AI can?"

Bold assumption that the devil and AI aren't aligned ;)

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist

Nah, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that Machine Learning is a legitimate field of study, and not just thinly veiled demon summoning.

I feel similarly about MS Word. It can actually produce decent documents if you learn how to use it, in particularly if you use styles consistently and never, ever touch the bold, italic, colours etc. (outside of defining said styles, although the defaults are probably all most people need). Unfortunately I think the appeal of Word is that you don't have to learn this and it will just do what you want. Is AI the panacea that will both do what you want and give you the right answers every time?

Word and Excel both have low barrier to entry, and a high skill ceiling.

Also people complaining about AI inaccuracy are just technical people that like precision. The vast majority of the world is people who dont give a damn about accuracy or even correctness. They just want to appear as if not completely useless to people that could potentially affect their salary

I can pretty reliably guess that approximately 100% of all companies in the world use excel tables for financial data and for processes. Ok, this was a joke. It's actually 99.99% of all companies. One would think that financial data, inventory and stuff like that should be damn precise. No?

How precise do they really need to be? If there's 3 of a widget on the shelf in the factory, and the factory uses 1000 per day, is it crucial to know that there's 3 of them, and not 0 or 50? Either way, the factory ain't running today or tomorrow or until more of those things come in. Similarly, what's $3 missing from an internal spreadsheet when the company costs $5,000 an hour to operate (or $10 million a year). Obviously errors accumulate so the books need to be reconciled, but apl that stuff only need to be sufficiently directionally accurate with enough precision. If precision is free, then sure, but if a good enough job is cheaper? We all make that call every day.

If you have 2000 hectares of land you need to buy the exact amount of seeds to sow them. If you buy less you are losing money, if you buy more it is useless and you are losing money. If you have trucks or other machinery in the company you need to report exact amount of fuel needed/used, or either they won't run or you lose money on machinery missing fuel. If you need to tax a company, it is pretty important if there are 100 tons of steel used or 1000 tons. Or if the company has 5 factories to be taxed or 15. Etc.

You are anthropomorphizing LLM programs, you assume that if a number in a spreadsheed is big, then program can somehow understand it that it is a big number and if it will make an error it will be a small order error like a human would make. Human process: "hmm, here is a calculation where we divide our imports by number of subsidiaries, let me estimate this in my head, ok, looks like 7320." (actual correct answer was 7340, bu human made a small, typical mistake in the math) LLM program process: it literally uses heat maps and randomization to arrive at each particular character in a row. So it may be 7340, or it may be 8745632, or 1320, or whatever. There is a comment here at a top, from another user, where he queried LLM to make a change of value in the document and it did it correctly. But at the same time it replaced bank account number with a different bank account number. Because to LLM it is the same - sixteen digit in the field, or another sixteen digits in a field, it is the same for LLM. Because it is not AI and doesn't "understand" what it does.

If you have 2000 hecatares land, there is no way you're buying the exact right amount of seeds. You overbuy seeds by as little as you can, but seeds get loaded via tractor bucket, which is fairly messy. You're going to lose a decent amount of seeds. Thus, a lb or kilo of seeds or < 1% in the scheme of things isn't even going to be noticed, much less cause the demise of your farm

For fuel, similarly, you're going to lose militers to evaporation on a hot day, so similarly, being off my ml isn't material.

If you tax a company, fine, sure, the company is going to want it to be right, but 1 or two tons in a 10,000 ton order is again, < 1%. There is some threshold below which precision is extra unnecessary work, though if you have problems with thieves and corruption, you're going to want additional precision that isn't necessary elsewhere.

As to where in my comment I'm anthropomorphizing LLMs, you're going to have to point out where I did that, as the word LLM doesn't appear anywhere in my comment, so it feels like you're projecting claims my comment does not make, as it is LLM neutral and merely point of that 100% exact precision doesn't come without a cost.

A small error in a spreadsheet (or other program but spreadsheets can hide errors) can cause huge errors in the output.

"just" technical people who like precision are the reason we are here, typing this, and why lots of parts of our world is pretty cool and comfortable. I wouldn't say that's useless and "just" some people when it clearly is generating unmistakable value

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