Paul Barnhurst shows how AI tools mishandle spreadsheet data: misindexing rows, ignoring explicit labels like "net debt" and "shares outstanding", and creating useless charts that treat years as a series. The AI works if you're willing to teach it.
As I break it apart, you can see. Okay, it didn't index. I put the table, but instead of a match here, it did a rows formula times something. It's really interesting of how it's doing it all. It's just not very atypical. It's advanced, it worked. Everything else is simple. Formula, simplex, lookup. Fine. It did net debt. Why did it not reference net debt here? I know it says less net debt. You could have broke up the columns. You could have taught it. Just take the word that you need so you know those type of things. Shares outstanding. Again, why is it not just referencing the word right answer. But I've seen a lot of that. That's pretty common. And so then it has its graph down here where I guess it's showing free cash flow and I'm not sure what else. It's put the years in this as a series again. And this graph is hideous. It's taking the default. But that's an ugly graph. I'm sorry, I would never present that to a manager. So I think what it highlights, and this is what I'm seeing along the way, is amazing. If you're patient, you can start just working with the tools in many cases, I think.
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