vitorio Posted September 30, 2017 Share Posted September 30, 2017 We all interact with artificial intelligence every day: It builds our Google searches, our Facebook feeds, and predicts the next word we’ll type. In this way we’re consumers of AI, rather than using it ourselves. But many of us use Excel. In an attempt to make it easier to work with machine learning on a daily basis, which Microsoft has repeatedly claimed will improve our lives rather than kill jobs, the company is adding a slew of machine learning tools to its Excel spreadsheet software, according to TechCrunch. Spreadsheet jockeys will be able to import machine learning models to analyze data within Excel, and the program will automatically recognize items such as company names and locations, and pull in additional data. The models could predict future sales numbers given different scenarios, or stand in for any number of software-as-a-service analytics tools that have become popular in sales and marketing. This also means Excel will try to understand the connections between your data as you enter it (like whether the words represent companies or people) rather than just determining if they’re numbers or text. “Historically, Excel has always been good at numbers and you can enter in text and use conditional formatting and things like that,” Jared Spataro, general manager for Microsoft Office, told TechCrunch. “We are adding the idea that Excel can now recognize data types that are richer than those two.” Excel will also will try to take data and automatically visualize it, something that Google Sheets already does natively. For those who can code, Excel will also accept Javascript and API calls from third-party services. All of this is undeniably boring, but sets up the easy-to-use and amazingly pervasive Excel to be an even more powerful tool for organizing and analyzing data. https://qz.com/1087888/microsoft-is-packing-artificial-intelligence-into-excel-for-anyone-to-use/ This is the near future for Microsoft Excel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BimBamSmash Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 They are packing AI into Excel for anyone to use? That's strange. Usually they conceive their better ideas subscribers only. Reading what AI can do is always fun. But personally I wish it wasn't being involved in just about every part of our lives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cubedj Posted October 2, 2017 Share Posted October 2, 2017 after seeing what Google was able to do with Google Translate thanks to the new AI based API this year, I think it can only be a good thing (if not counting all the SkyNet scenarios)... I know English well and I do not need a translator, but as proof I wrote this in my native language and got it translated by Google. Last year it would be easy to see that this was a machine translation, but now, thanks to AI, I did not have to fix a single mistake anymore... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davmil Posted October 8, 2017 Share Posted October 8, 2017 On 10/3/2017 at 6:26 AM, dcs18 said: On the parallel broadband side, the capability of internet connection speeds has got a shot in the arm, as well. On 10/1/2017 at 2:23 PM, BimBamSmash said: They are packing AI into Excel for anyone to use? That's strange. Usually they conceive their better ideas subscribers only. Reading what AI can do is always fun. But personally I wish it wasn't being involved in just about every part of our lives. Better get you big boy panties on b/cuz AI's going to intrude into every aspect of our lives and sooner than either it or we are ready. I fear. Hang on. In some ways I'm glad I'm 60+ because I 'gots me doubts' we humans will be able to adapt to the brave new world we're inventing and pushing out at such breakneck speed. Brave new world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davmil Posted October 8, 2017 Share Posted October 8, 2017 On 10/1/2017 at 10:14 PM, cubedj said: after seeing what Google was able to do with Google Translate thanks to the new AI based API this year, I think it can only be a good thing (if not counting all the SkyNet scenarios)... I know English well and I do not need a translator, but as proof I wrote this in my native language and got it translated by Google. Last year it would be easy to see that this was a machine translation, but now, thanks to AI, I did not have to fix a single mistake anymore... I'm glad to hear it's working so well for Czech. Other language's improvement seems uneven. Still, progress takes time and things are definitely improving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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