The official ChatGPT thread - the next big thing?

[Bo Diddley]

I would love to take a course on using AI. Seems like it's limits are simply your own imagination. Or maybe AI's imagination--maybe I need to be asking AI how to use AI.

[YOhio]

I would love to take a course on using AI. Seems like it's limits are simply your own imagination. Or maybe AI's imagination--maybe I need to be asking AI how to use AI.

I'd love to get your thoughts on GenAI.mil.

[MartyFunkhouser]

I would love to take a course on using AI. Seems like it's limits are simply your own imagination. Or maybe AI's imagination--maybe I need to be asking AI how to use AI.

Oddly, it isn't a bad idea to ask the capabilities and explore from there. I haven't been watching them, but there are a lot of youtube tutorials on AI.

[YOhio]

Oddly, it isn't a bad idea to ask the capabilities and explore from there. I haven't been watching them, but there are a lot of youtube tutorials on AI.

Since the likelihood of actually watching an entire youtube tutorial is low (for me, at least), I've had success linking the youtube video in Gemini and asking it to create a step-by-step instructional.

[Bo Diddley]

I'd love to get your thoughts on GenAI.mil.

Yeah, how does that work? Is the AI partioned off so it's somewhat secure?

I've used it a few times to fill in some knowledge gaps on how processes are supposed to work, only to find out we are doing them wrong. The AI could only give me general information for my question I had today, so it has some gaps.

[Bo Diddley]

Yeah, how does that work? Is the AI partioned off so it's somewhat secure?

I've used it a few times to fill in some knowledge gaps on how processes are supposed to work, only to find out we are doing them wrong. The AI could only give me general information for my question I had today, so it has some gaps.

Yep, definitely secure. But I can't process anything with PII, and that's what I work with the most on my job.

Looking forward to the rest of the models being made available.

[Bo Diddley]

We are also on the verge of transitioning from a legacy system to a new platform that is still under active development. Once fully implemented, it will provide access to significantly more robust reporting, which I expect to integrate with AI tools to enable predictive analytics and more accurate demand forecasting.

While I currently forecast demand effectively through experience and intuition, I look forward to further strengthening the process with improved data and analytics.

[Jeff Lebowski]

The new Claude in Excel add-in is really fun. Just tell it what you want it to do and it will take over. Creates pivot tables, charts, formulas, etc. The Excel API does not yet support a few things (data validation, conditional formatting, naming cells, to name a few), but I am sure that will be coming soon.

This is the kind of functionality we should have had with MS Co-Pilot. Crazy how microsoft has bungled AI so badly.

[BigFatMeanie]

The new Claude in Excel add-in is really fun. Just tell it what you want it to do and it will take over. Creates pivot tables, charts, formulas, etc. The Excel API does not yet support a few things (data validation, conditional formatting, naming cells, to name a few), but I am sure that will be coming soon.

This is the kind of functionality we should have had with MS Co-Pilot. Crazy how microsoft has bungled AI so badly.

Agreed. Copilot in Excel and Word and other office365 products does suck.

A couple of examples:

• I used to go to office.com in the browser and the default page was OneDrive where it showed me all my most recently used stuff. Microsoft replaced the office.com default page with a Copilot chat and buried one drive. Now it takes me 3 or 4 clicks to open my most recently worked on thing in the browser. I don't want to have a fricking AI chat conversation to open a dang file. I just want to click on the dang file I used yesterday!
• In Excel, the Copilot thing started showing up as a fly-out context menu option every time I clicked a cell. Fortunately I was able to turn this off.
• I asked Copilot to give me a YYYY-MM-DD date formatting formula and apply it to a specific column of data. It couldn't even do that. I tried three different times and each time the formula was different and it couldn't figure out how to apply it to a column. I can use Claud/Python to generate an Excel file that has the right formula but Copilot can't do it.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Agreed. Copilot in Excel and Word and other office365 products does suck.

A couple of examples:

• I used to go to office.com in the browser and the default page was OneDrive where it showed me all my most recently used stuff. Microsoft replaced the office.com default page with a Copilot chat and buried one drive. Now it takes me 3 or 4 clicks to open my most recently worked on thing in the browser. I don't want to have a fricking AI chat conversation to open a dang file. I just want to click on the dang file I used yesterday!
• In Excel, the Copilot thing started showing up as a fly-out context menu option every time I clicked a cell. Fortunately I was able to turn this off.
• I asked Copilot to give me a YYYY-MM-DD date formatting formula and apply it to a specific column of data. It couldn't even do that. I tried three different times and each time the formula was different and it couldn't figure out how to apply it to a column. I can use Claud/Python to generate an Excel file that has the right formula but Copilot can't do it.

Yeah, it is so bizarre. Copilot is not much different than the old Clippy.

[Clark Addison]

We have been slow to adopt AI at my company for everyday work; all AI sites are blocked. We are finally, in a few weeks, getting access to... Copilot. You guys are making me not excited for that.

The funny thing about blocking the sites is that every single person I know does some things using AI on their personal laptop or phone and then sends to their work laptop.

[Donuthole]

Like many full-time missionaries, my daughter sends out a weekly email to a large group--family, extended family, ward members, stake members, friends, etc. It's her weekly update and I can tell she enjoys doing it. She seems to use it as a bit of an artistic outlet, working in lots of emojis (culling the depths of the available emojis, in fact) and sharing fun facts abour past week and concluding with a spiritual thought. Nothing earth shattering, but it's an enjoyable read.

A few weeks into her mission, I decided I would take her emails and format them in a way that would allow them to be printed and bound in a booklet. Sort of a missionary email journal, of sorts. However, because of all the emojis, it is not a simple "copy/paste" job. After toying around in word for a while, I eventually ended up figuring out a way to create them in Power Point in a way that they look pretty much just like her email but they all fit on a single page. Then I grab the photos she sends each week and I paste and caption those on a separate page. Each email takes about 30-40 mins to get looking just right. I figured I would see if AI could do an equivalent job. So I gave it an image that I had done as an example, and then copied and pasted her email, complete with emojis, right into the chat box. It spit out something that was impressively similar looking to what I was doing. But it cut off the bottom paragraph. 5 attempts later, it just could not wrap its artificial brain around adjusting the spacing within the email to fit the entire email onto a single page. Also, as I looked closer, I noticed that it was not using the same emojis, but it was replicating what it thought they were, and most of them didn't even resemble the original emoji. Sigh. So close but still so, so far. So i'll keep doing it manually.

[YOhio]

Like many full-time missionaries, my daughter sends out a weekly email to a large group--family, extended family, ward members, stake members, friends, etc. It's her weekly update and I can tell she enjoys doing it. She seems to use it as a bit of an artistic outlet, working in lots of emojis (culling the depths of the available emojis, in fact) and sharing fun facts abour past week and concluding with a spiritual thought. Nothing earth shattering, but it's an enjoyable read.

A few weeks into her mission, I decided I would take her emails and format them in a way that would allow them to be printed and bound in a booklet. Sort of a missionary email journal, of sorts. However, because of all the emojis, it is not a simple "copy/paste" job. After toying around in word for a while, I eventually ended up figuring out a way to create them in Power Point in a way that they look pretty much just like her email but they all fit on a single page. Then I grab the photos she sends each week and I paste and caption those on a separate page. Each email takes about 30-40 mins to get looking just right. I figured I would see if AI could do an equivalent job. So I gave it an image that I had done as an example, and then copied and pasted her email, complete with emojis, right into the chat box. It spit out something that was impressively similar looking to what I was doing. But it cut off the bottom paragraph. 5 attempts later, it just could not wrap its artificial brain around adjusting the spacing within the email to fit the entire email onto a single page. Also, as I looked closer, I noticed that it was not using the same emojis, but it was replicating what it thought they were, and most of them didn't even resemble the original emoji. Sigh. So close but still so, so far. So i'll keep doing it manually.

Which LLM are you using?

[MartyFunkhouser]

Claude's usage limits is very annoying.

[YOhio]

This is pretty incredible writing. Has a bit of a Christian resonance to it.

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