AI has completely killed Google Translate. It is significantly superior in every way.
GT often uses the wrong word or changes the tone of a message. AI always gets the intent right and always seems to use the most appropriate words given the original intent/meaning (or at least something way better than what GT does). And, whenever there is doubt, I can argue with it, so AI is happy to explain the nuances and differences between the possibilities.
Edit: I recently had to send a semi-formal email requesting something from a government employee in a different country (using a language I'm a beginner at), and AI was immensely helpful in getting the right tone (neither informal or too formal) and everything else right. The Google Translate version of what I had originally written was miles and miles and miles worse than what AI helped me craft.
Conventional web search: I use Google's AI Mode almost exclusively when I use Google.
Refactoring tools in my IDE: In some cases where I could use the refactoring tools in my IDE I will ask the assistant to do something for me instead, of course it will also make changes that the refactoring tools won't do such as tear apart a complicated if-then-else ladder.
Photo retouching: there are plenty of photo retouching jobs that can be done easily with AI or with the tools built into Photoshop, which one is better depends on the situation. I really wish I had an AI tool to make masks ("cut out the person") that I could then use with the other tools or with AI generation.
The big one for me is shell scripting and working with the terminal in general. For everything except for the simplest commands, I find myself preferring to ask in plain English, and while imperfect, it has both saved me time and decreased the number of times I've accidentally deleted/broken things, compared to me doing it manually.
To focus on Excel / Google Sheets itself, AI makes it a lot more usable in that you can describe what you want and it can generate formulas for you. I have a running spreadsheet that I had to manually manipulate because I didn't know how to automate some parts and a few minutes with an LLM fixed it for me.
Transitions take time. 0 -> 1 replacement of existing interfaces is (1) not easy and (2) not a practical approach to market adoption.
"slapping on a chatbot" is a v0 attempt at re-imagining what software looks like. It's not very inventive and sometimes it sucks, but it's easy to understand and implement and we're very early in this era.
The distribution of change also isn't uniform. Excel might not have changed dramatically, but software engineering apps are evolving rapidly. Clawdbot/moltbot hint at new forms of personal computing. Look for the future where the optimism is.
AI has completely killed Google Translate. It is significantly superior in every way.
GT often uses the wrong word or changes the tone of a message. AI always gets the intent right and always seems to use the most appropriate words given the original intent/meaning (or at least something way better than what GT does). And, whenever there is doubt, I can argue with it, so AI is happy to explain the nuances and differences between the possibilities.
Edit: I recently had to send a semi-formal email requesting something from a government employee in a different country (using a language I'm a beginner at), and AI was immensely helpful in getting the right tone (neither informal or too formal) and everything else right. The Google Translate version of what I had originally written was miles and miles and miles worse than what AI helped me craft.
True, but Google Translate was already "AI". They previously used LSTMs. And before LSTMs, it was ML-like statistical translation.
complete nonsense, like saying cars have failed to replace a single horse application or feature.
Conventional web search: I use Google's AI Mode almost exclusively when I use Google.
Refactoring tools in my IDE: In some cases where I could use the refactoring tools in my IDE I will ask the assistant to do something for me instead, of course it will also make changes that the refactoring tools won't do such as tear apart a complicated if-then-else ladder.
Photo retouching: there are plenty of photo retouching jobs that can be done easily with AI or with the tools built into Photoshop, which one is better depends on the situation. I really wish I had an AI tool to make masks ("cut out the person") that I could then use with the other tools or with AI generation.
The big one for me is shell scripting and working with the terminal in general. For everything except for the simplest commands, I find myself preferring to ask in plain English, and while imperfect, it has both saved me time and decreased the number of times I've accidentally deleted/broken things, compared to me doing it manually.
We've already reached the point where effectively using AI means learning how to resist it.
To focus on Excel / Google Sheets itself, AI makes it a lot more usable in that you can describe what you want and it can generate formulas for you. I have a running spreadsheet that I had to manually manipulate because I didn't know how to automate some parts and a few minutes with an LLM fixed it for me.
Transitions take time. 0 -> 1 replacement of existing interfaces is (1) not easy and (2) not a practical approach to market adoption.
"slapping on a chatbot" is a v0 attempt at re-imagining what software looks like. It's not very inventive and sometimes it sucks, but it's easy to understand and implement and we're very early in this era.
The distribution of change also isn't uniform. Excel might not have changed dramatically, but software engineering apps are evolving rapidly. Clawdbot/moltbot hint at new forms of personal computing. Look for the future where the optimism is.
Try "Claude in Excel", its pretty good.
This is certainly a take.
Thanks G
Nobody uses Excel anymore, now everyone uses Microsoft 365 Copilot!
I'm so sorry to hear that you are falling behind. With this attitude you are going to keep falling behind. Good luck.