They are pushing it at my work. I spent half a day trying to train Copilot to build me a report from one PDF and one way too formatted excel sheet, no go, the too-formatted excel stumped it, I had to clean it up first. I am booking payroll and the fucking system we use refuses to generate a report with the whole cost, there is one for gross to net and a separate one, not available in excel, and not in a format that can be put in a spreadsheet, for the employer cost. I need to split the total into departments & job cost codes. (ETA the payroll system also doesn’t handle the job costing, even after I get total cost, more manual work)
I worked with the department who sends me this trash and glory be, there was a CSV for the gross to net one. Finally wrestled it into getting this right and asked it “what do I ask next time to get this result the first time” and it does now do a reliable job of this BUT:
All it’s doing is making a report that the payroll system really and truly ought to be capable of producing. And I guess letting me honestly say, “sure boss, I use the copilot”. It’s not adding anything at all, just making up for a glaring defect in the reporting available from the payroll company. Give me access to that system and I could build the report, it doesn’t need AI at all.
This is my problem with AI where I work. I can use it to get the result I want (eventually) although I have to do some editing.
But I can also use the python script that has been working fine for years, which gets me 99% of the way there in 15 seconds. It would be faster but the script is terribly unoptimized because I’m not a programmer.
They are pushing it at my work. I spent half a day trying to train Copilot to build me a report from one PDF and one way too formatted excel sheet, no go, the too-formatted excel stumped it, I had to clean it up first. I am booking payroll and the fucking system we use refuses to generate a report with the whole cost, there is one for gross to net and a separate one, not available in excel, and not in a format that can be put in a spreadsheet, for the employer cost. I need to split the total into departments & job cost codes. (ETA the payroll system also doesn’t handle the job costing, even after I get total cost, more manual work)
I worked with the department who sends me this trash and glory be, there was a CSV for the gross to net one. Finally wrestled it into getting this right and asked it “what do I ask next time to get this result the first time” and it does now do a reliable job of this BUT:
All it’s doing is making a report that the payroll system really and truly ought to be capable of producing. And I guess letting me honestly say, “sure boss, I use the copilot”. It’s not adding anything at all, just making up for a glaring defect in the reporting available from the payroll company. Give me access to that system and I could build the report, it doesn’t need AI at all.
This is my problem with AI where I work. I can use it to get the result I want (eventually) although I have to do some editing.
But I can also use the python script that has been working fine for years, which gets me 99% of the way there in 15 seconds. It would be faster but the script is terribly unoptimized because I’m not a programmer.