IDEAS in Excel: Be wary of these weaknesses

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Excel has a feature called Ideas. It offers to provide information about the user’s dataset, and accepts natural language questions. This video shows areas where you need to watch out or you can get into deep trouble.

I’m skeptical of AI/ML (artificial intelligence and machine learning). Why? Because the hype and marketing around this technology talks about the promises and what’s possible. But this video shows several examples where Ideas (using AI/ML) makes goofs.

Ideas–like any other AI/ML application–makes guesses. Some guesses are much better than others. Some guesses are way off the mark and if we have to be extra careful about results that we didn’t generate ourselves.

Yes, AI/ML can be helpful. But it puts more responsibility on the user to understand and verify everything around their data.

#ExcelIdeas
#Ideas
#ArtificialIntelligence

For an intro to Get & Transform (Power Query) try my Lynda/LinkedIn course:
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/oz-du-soleil?trk=insiders_28299411_learning
Website: https://ozdusoleil.com

My book: Guerrilla Data Analysis 2nd Edition

My old blog: http://datascopic.net/blog-2-2