this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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[–] Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 13 points 10 hours ago

Lemme guess. It's "AI Integrated"

[–] deacon@lemmy.world 82 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Somewhat off-topic, but that’s the first time in a long time I’ve read a random article on the internet and just instantly liked the writer’s writing style without respect to the topic.

That was a depressing article, but a very enjoyable read.

[–] nailbar@sopuli.xyz 8 points 12 hours ago

I really need to start actually reading articles and following authors instead of just scrolling through headlines.

[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 38 points 18 hours ago

I also enjoyed their writing.

Nvidia, currently propping up the market like a load-bearing matchstick

Loved this 😂

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 164 points 1 day ago (16 children)

This is totally expected and also absolutely peanuts compared to Intel, who once released a processor that managed to perform floating point long division incorrectly in fascinating (if you're the right type of nerd) and subtle ways. Hands up everyone who remembers that debacle!

Nobody? Just me?

Anyway, I totally had — and probably still have, somewhere — one of the affected chips. You could check if yours was one of the flawed ones literally by using the Windows calculator.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

Hah! That was my first thought, too, when I saw the headline.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 57 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Making a few digits worth of wrong division way down in the not very significant bits of the answer, is way better than encouraging all your users to use an LLM to generate the answers for their quarterly reports / tax forms / do we have enough food for the winter calculations. The Pentium division fuckup was barely worth fixing unless you were doing some kind of numerical analysis or simulation or something, which is why it slipped past all the testing initially. This is astronomically worse of a fuck-up.

[–] UnculturedSwine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

They even say not to use it for financial calculations or high stakes scenarios. They can't provide an example of using it in any way that is useful for getting actual work done. It's a solution in search of a problem.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 5 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, and I'm only supposed to use this bong for smoking tobacco. It said so very very clearly when I bought it so you know they mean it.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 day ago

Oh no, I remember that well. I was in high school 👴

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[–] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 129 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Microsoft announces new Chief Accuracy Officer, Jack Handey

Mr. Handey has released a statement:

Instead of having "answers" on a math test, they should just call them "impressions," and if you got a different "impression," so what, can't we all be brothers?

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 80 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you’ll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.”

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 62 points 1 day ago (9 children)

“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”

-Jack Handy

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 1 points 12 hours ago

"Hmm. I wonder. I was thinking of dancing trees. Now I'm wondering what's next. Screaming trees. Yeah. That's got to be the answer. Screaming trees." - private notes by Hans Reiser, filesystem designer and a convicted murderer

(OK, that's a fake quote. This one is real:)

"Trees have their roots pointing up. And if you cut a tree apart, you get a forest. No, I'm not drunk." - one of my computer science profs, on data structures

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[–] JackHandy@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 21 hours ago

Everyone would be a lot happier, that's all I'm saying.

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[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

They already did that with visual basic and excel. Anyone remember when excels math was, just sorta right?

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 28 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

excel math is fine if you use the syntax correctly. Its problems are mostly assume many number inputs as dates and other performance issues. Doing math wrong is not one of them.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

No there were math errors. Was it using statistical functions? I can't recall, I just know we had to double check everything.

[–] addie@feddit.uk 10 points 18 hours ago

Yeah, some of the answers it produces are very questionable. The implementation of a lot of the stat functions is super-naive and not very stable in borderline cases. Take the standard deviation of three identical numbers, get an answer which is nearly-but-not-quite zero. They've also refused to improve their algorithms as it might break existing customer worksheets.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 106 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Obviously, the problem is that you're asking the wrong questions. The AI is infallible. We just need to get the end user to accept that sometimes 2+2 = 5. Just depends on what Big Brother tells you.

[–] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 77 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] shoo@lemmy.world 55 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's a great question! I'll be happy to help you count the lights. I see five lights.

Here are a few ways you can improve indoor lighting:

[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago

That's a great question! I'll be happy to help you count the lights. I see five lights.

This symbolizes the fact that for the last five hundred years white people have been victims of genocide in South Africa.

Would you like to learn more?

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[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

ITT: people who didn’t read the article.

Excel is still doing the calculations, not the AI. The AI is helping to write functions. You can easily spot check a couple examples then apply that same formula down the column. I don’t really see the issue.

Of all the things to shove AI into, the first thing that came to my mind years back was Excel. It’s handy when I’m presented a spreadsheet of data at work and I just want to do something like “write a function to extract just the number from a column containing data formatted like LPF_PHASE_OF_CARE [PAF 304001]” because I just want to copy paste all the numbers somewhere. It’s trivial to verify it works correctly, I can examine the formula, and I don’t have to wade through numerous shitty Excel tutorial websites to try and teach myself something I’ll use once or twice a year.

Quick shitpost images I share with friends and Excel functions are where I get the most utility out of AI, which in general I think sucks and is massively overhyped.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Honestly, if they just made it easier to craft a formula (like, I dunno multiple lines, some kind of better color coding of matched parentheses, etc), that'd go a lot farther.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 day ago

You can already do multiple lines. Drag the divider between the entry box and the grid down to make it larger, and use Alt-Enter to make a new line in a formula. Been there since at least 2009. You’re welcome.

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[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago

Excel is still doing the calculations, not the AI. The AI is helping to write functions.

This distinction is immaterial. This is like a big child grabbing a smaller child's hand and slapping them with their own hand saying "quit hitting yourself". It's like trying to get out of a speeding ticket by saying all you did was push the accelerator... Truely it was the fuel injectors forcing the vehicle to an illegal speed.

Just because you've adjusted the abstraction layer at which you've ceded deterministic outcomes, doesn't mean AI isn't doing it.

You can easily spot check a couple examples then apply that same formula down the column.

This may be appropriate in some scenarios, specifically:

  • When accuracy isn't important

  • When you will never need to justify what is being done to anyone (including yourself)

This, however, covers a decidedly small portion of professional work done using Excel.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What? That’s not what the article says.

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My math teachers always told me that "math is not an opinion".

I'd like to see them now defending that!

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago
IF THEN MAYBE...
[–] teft@piefed.social 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Imagine buying a car that works great except every now and then when you want to turn left it goes right. No one would willingly buy that.

[–] jawa21@piefed.blahaj.zone 49 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Turn alt right by design/feature?

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 18 hours ago

teslas just locks onto pedestrians and accelerates.

[–] DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (5 children)

A worthy successor to the 65535 Excel bug.

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[–] CubitOom@infosec.pub 14 points 1 day ago

Y'all better get used to doing your own math to check other people's math.

[–] uhdeuidheuidhed@thelemmy.club 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Man, all those saps that started studying AI thinking it was necessary are in for a rude awakening.

I'd almost feel bad for them, if they weren't so eager to follow the memes while making the digital space worse for all of us.

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml 5 points 23 hours ago

Depends on what studying AI you mean. The whole ML field is still very much have its uses, the ones that would have a rude awakening are the ones "studying" how to do "prompt engineering"

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