MissConstrue
@MissConstrue@mefi.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

Y'all, because there is no escaping the dada reality we all apparently inhabit, #Microsoft has added #LLM to #Excel, except it hallucinates and can make stuff up, so they say you shouldn't use it in cases where you need your spreadsheet to be, ya know...accurate.

Or as they put it: “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT “can give incorrect responses.”

In the name of Ada Lovelace, I curse this idiocy to return the techbro's cranium from which this sprang with the force of Clippy asking to help.

Article about (LLM calling itself) #AI in Excel:
https://www.theverge.com/news/761338/microsoft-excel-ai-copilot-spreadsheet-cell-filling

From @TechDesk : MS Support Docs on how to disable Copilot
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-copilot-in-microsoft-365-apps-bc7e530b-152d-4123-8e78-edc06f8b85f1

h/t to Flipboard for finding the Verge article first too.
Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

@MissConstrue @TechDesk

How about this: Microsoft could market an assistant which takes written or spoken direction, and either 1) write something which sounds like an answer, or 2) find snippets which might be relevant, along with a link to the source, so you can look over what it found.

Microsoft could call it ‘Microsoft Internet Explorer’. Oh, wait…
MissConstrue
@MissConstrue@mefi.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week
@Roundtrip @TechDesk What’s so frustrating is that 10-20 years ago, you could actually search the internet. Now? Not so much. There is so much ai sludge and marketing sludge that finding actual verifiable data has become a skill set requiring knowing how to work around all the layers of cruft.
Even for me, and I’m a solid researcher, there are times when I just ask mastodon to help me find a knowledge expert on a topic because our information system is so polluted.
Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

@MissConstrue 🧵ChatGPT-5 as reference link fixer

I agree. I have however been able to easily prompt and poke ChatGPT-5 to review a 13 year old blog post about Neil Armstrong (I gave it a URL) and suggest fixes for any broken links it found iin the post’s reference list. It found the broken links and made helpful suggestions, but I wanted more.

1/N

tractionsoftware.com/traction/

Screenshot of a 26 Aug 2012 blog post ‘Remembering Neil Armstrong…’ by Greg Lloyd, TractionSoftware.com after Armstrong’s 25 Aug 2012 death. The post starts with a quote by Armstrong, writing in ‘The New Engineering Century: ”I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.” Lloyd remembers asking a question to Armstrong at an event for high school students in Spring 1996, just after the Gemini VIII mission. The post includes tributes to Armstrong, links to his New York Times obituary, NASA mission logs, an Armstrong NASA oral history interview, a link to the original 1996 Gemini VIII Mission Crew Debrief, and other nerdy references.
Screenshot of a 26 Aug 2012 blog post ‘Remembering Neil Armstrong…’ by Greg Lloyd, TractionSoftware.com after Armstrong’s 25 Aug 2012 death. The post starts with a quote by Armstrong, writing in ‘The New Engineering Century: ”I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.” Lloyd remembers asking a question to Armstrong at an event for high school students in Spring 1996, just after the Gemini VIII mission. The post includes tributes to Armstrong, links to his New York Times obituary, NASA mission logs, an Armstrong NASA oral history interview, a link to the original 1996 Gemini VIII Mission Crew Debrief, and other nerdy references.
Screenshot of a 26 Aug 2012 blog post ‘Remembering Neil Armstrong…’ by Greg Lloyd, TractionSoftware.com after Armstrong’s 25 Aug 2012 death. The post starts with a quote by Armstrong, writing in ‘The New Engineering Century: ”I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.” Lloyd remembers asking a question to Armstrong at an event for high school students in Spring 1996, just after the Gemini VIII mission. The post includes tributes to Armstrong, links to his New York Times obituary, NASA mission logs, an Armstrong NASA oral history interview, a link to the original 1996 Gemini VIII Mission Crew Debrief, and other nerdy references.
Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

@MissConstrue 🧵ChatGPT-5 as reference link fixer

I wanted a series of quotes from Armstrong and Scott about their handing of a dangerous Mar 1966 Gemini VIII spin due to a stuck thruster. In 2017 I found quotes from a NASA Gemini VIII Mission Summary, but mistakenly pasted a URL to an Apollo XI Mission Summary when creating the link. ChatGPT-5 pointed out the discrepancy in its reply, and suggested a link to an alternative 2020 NASA post about the Gemini VIII mission. Good, but…

2/N
Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

@MissConstrue 🧵ChatGPT-5 as reference link fixer

I wanted direct quotes. By Armstrong and Scott from an original source - their Mission debrief. I know such a report *should* exist, but couldn’t find it online in 2012. I asked for astronaut quotes about the spin incident, attributing each quote by name and page number from the 117 page report. ChatGPT-5 did so (with about 1.5 minutes of ‘thinking’ times logged).

3/N
Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

@MissConstrue 🧵ChatGPT-5 as reference link fixer

I asked: “Please give quotes and summary of notes after Agena undocking, including recognition, diagnosis, and recovery from stuck thruster problem. Include direct quotes and for each block of quotes, the debriefing report page number. I want a short narrative using direct quotes including attribution of the astronaut speaking.”

One issue: it used PDF rather than Report page numbers for citations.

4/4

The reply: tractionsoftware.com/db/share/

Screenshot of the start of a two page report generated by ChatGPT-5 on 25 Aug 2025, based on prompts by Greg Lloyd to find and suggest fixes to broken URL links in his Aug 2012 blog post. The broken links (and one labeled link) were found and reported. Lloyd prompted for a narrative summary of a significant event in the Gemini VIII mission, to be based solely on a .pdf of the Gemini VIII crew debrief — which was recorded just after Armstrong and Scott landed. Prompt: “Please give quotes and summary of notes after Agena undocking, including recognition, diagnosis, and recovery from stuck thruster problem. Include direct quotes and for each block of quotes, the debriefing report page number. I want a short narrative using direct quotes including attribution of the astronaut speaking.”
Screenshot of the start of a two page report generated by ChatGPT-5 on 25 Aug 2025, based on prompts by Greg Lloyd to find and suggest fixes to broken URL links in his Aug 2012 blog post. The broken links (and one labeled link) were found and reported. Lloyd prompted for a narrative summary of a significant event in the Gemini VIII mission, to be based solely on a .pdf of the Gemini VIII crew debrief — which was recorded just after Armstrong and Scott landed. Prompt: “Please give quotes and summary of notes after Agena undocking, including recognition, diagnosis, and recovery from stuck thruster problem. Include direct quotes and for each block of quotes, the debriefing report page number. I want a short narrative using direct quotes including attribution of the astronaut speaking.”
Screenshot of the start of a two page report generated by ChatGPT-5 on 25 Aug 2025, based on prompts by Greg Lloyd to find and suggest fixes to broken URL links in his Aug 2012 blog post. The broken links (and one labeled link) were found and reported. Lloyd prompted for a narrative summary of a significant event in the Gemini VIII mission, to be based solely on a .pdf of the Gemini VIII crew debrief — which was recorded just after Armstrong and Scott landed. Prompt: “Please give quotes and summary of notes after Agena undocking, including recognition, diagnosis, and recovery from stuck thruster problem. Include direct quotes and for each block of quotes, the debriefing report page number. I want a short narrative using direct quotes including attribution of the astronaut speaking.”