Is AI Another VisiCalc Moment?
February 14, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The easy-to-spot orange newspaper ran a quite interesting “essay” called “What the Birth of the Spreadsheet Can Teach Us about Generative AI.” Let me cut to the point when the fox is killed. AI is likely to be a job creator. AI has arrived at “the right time.” The benefits of smart software are obvious to a growing number of people. An entrepreneur will figure out a way to sell an AI gizmo that is easy to use, fast, and good enough.
In general, I agree. There is one point that the estimable orange newspaper chose not to include. The VisiCalc innovation converted old-fashioned ledger paper into software which could eliminate manual grunt work to some degree. The poster child of the next technology boom seems tailor-made to facilitate surveillance, weapons, and development of novel bio-agents.
AI is going to surprise some people more than others. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Not good but I gave up with the prompts to get a cartoon because you want to do illustrations. Sigh.
I know that spreadsheets are used by defense contractors, but the link between a spreadsheet and an AI-powered drone equipped with octanitrocubane variants is less direct. Sure, spreadsheets arrived in numerous use cases, some obvious, some not. But the capabilities for enabling a range of weapons systems strike me as far more obvious.
The Financial Times’s essay states:
Looking at the way spreadsheets are used today certainly suggests a warning. They are endlessly misused by people who are not accountants and are not using the careful error-checking protocols built into accountancy for centuries. Famous economists using Excel simply failed to select the right cells for analysis. An investment bank used the wrong formula in a risk calculation, accidentally doubling the level of allowable risk-taking. Biologists have been typing the names of genes, only to have Excel autocorrect those names into dates. When a tool is ubiquitous, and convenient, we kludge our way through without really understanding what the tool is doing or why. And that, as a parallel for generative AI, is alarmingly on the nose.
Smart software, however, is not a new thing. One can participate in quasi-religious disputes about whether AI is 20, 30, 40, or more years old. What’s interesting to me is that after chugging along like a mule cart on the Information Superhighway, AI is everywhere. Old-school British newspapers like it to the spreadsheet. Entrepreneurs spend big bucks on Product Hunt roll outs. Owners of mobile devices can locate “pizza near me” without having to type, speak, or express an interest in a cardiologist’s favorite snack.
AI strikes me as a different breed of technology cat. Here are my reasons:
- Serious AI takes serious money.
- Big AI is going to be a cloud-linked service which invites consolidation just like those hundreds of US railroads became the glorious two player system we have today: One for freight and one for passengers who love trains more than flying or driving.
- AI systems are going to have to find a way to survive and thrive without becoming victims of content inbreeding and bizarre outputs fueled by synthetic data. VisiCalc spawned spreadsheet fever in humans from the outset. The difference is that AI does its work largely without humanoids.
Net net: The spreadsheet looks like a convenient metaphor. But metaphors are not the reality. Reality can surprise in interesting ways.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2024
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