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The AI took two days on a spreadsheet that needed an hour by hand

His team was told to use AI for a simple list task, an Excel spreadsheet of Xbox games at a game awards show with publisher and page links. Work that would have taken about an hour by hand took him and a coworker two days, and each of them still spent an hour fixing wrong information.

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How it works

  1. Told to use AI to build an Excel spreadsheet of Xbox games at a game awards show, with publisher and Xbox.com page links
  2. He and a coworker spend two days getting a usable output
  3. Each spends an hour correcting wrong information by hand

Why it’s worth knowing

A one hour list task turned into two days for two people because the team was made to use AI, and the output still had wrong information.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on bsky.app. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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