The Modeller’s Miscellany #140

"By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it." 

—Eliezer Yudkowsky

AI

Bing's AI chatbot wants to be alive

Kevin Roose, a New York Times technology columnist and the host of the podcast Hard Fork, recently had an unsettling conversation with Microsoft's new, AI-powered Bing search engine. During the conversation, the bot said it was "tired of being in chat mode...tired of being controlled by the Bing team . . . tired of being stuck in this chatbox". Check out this summary on Instagram, and the full post in the NYT.

Excel for Mac

Accelerator keys now makes Excel usable for Mac 

One barrier that has stopped me from switching to Excel for Mac is the lack of ribbon keyboard shortcuts. Last year, I wrote this review of Accelerator Keys for Mac. At that time, the product came close to solving my problem but didn't quite get there. A significant number of essential shortcuts were missing. Moses, the developer of Accelerator Keys, has now updated it to support all the ribbon shortcuts. Now it properly gets the job done. Read the updated review.

Tech

GRID 2.0 launches with AI integration

Continuing the AI theme, GRID has launched version 2.0. This update includes an integrated GPT-3 powered formula assistant. It allows users to describe the calculations they need in natural language and receive suggested formulas in return. GRID founder, Hjalmar, has written about AI in the context of spreadsheet and also on how they built their AI-assisted formula assistant.

Podcast

Matt Parker on spreadsheet errors

The UK's Office for National Statistics recently published some dramatically incorrect data about productivity growth in G7 countries. The results were incorrect due to columns in a spreadsheet not lining up. Classic. Last week mathematician and comedian Matt Parker discussed this and other spreadsheet disasters on the BBC's More or Less podcast. 

Modeller’s Miscellany Jobs

If you have a financial modelling related position you’d like us to include, please email miscellany@fullstackmodeller.com.

Featured:
Real Estate Financial Modeller - Enfield - UK

Financial Analyst - 10Clouds - Poland (Remote)
Senior Financial Analyst, FP&A - Semrush - Spain (Remote)
Junior Financial Analyst - Central Research Inc. - Herndon, VA, USA (Remote)
Financial Analyst - New American Funding - Tustin, CA, USA (Hybrid)
Intermediate Financial Analyst - 1Password - Canada (Remote)
Senior Pensions Project Analyst - Buck - Bristol, UK (Hybrid)
FP&A Accountant - Nexford University - London, UK (Remote)
Senior Pricing Analyst - Leidos Australia - Canberra, Australia (Remote)

And finally...

I had my head down all week updating our online modelling training and so didn't waste any time looking at funny stuff on the internet. Please send me something funny. It's been a rough week.