AI companies pitch their products as magical, but under the hood, it’s all code and math. Don’t believe me? Someone got an AI model working in an Excel spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are all you need, a project by Ishan Anand that recreates GPT2, a precursor to the technology that powers ChatGPT, entirely in a single Excel spreadsheet. This is the AI equivalent of running Doom on an old smart fridge.
GPT2 in a Spreadsheet: A Demo of Spreadsheets is All You Need
The file is, as expected, a whopping 1.34GB, and it won’t load on Mac or the web version of Excel. You’ll need Windows to get this working, ideally with a decent processor. And you can’t expect to be able to use it in the same way as chat-based large language models. This is obviously not going to replace ChatGPT, nor is it intended to. It’s mainly a great way to learn how large language models work.
You can start by downloading the spreadsheet from Github. You will add your prompt to the second sheet of the spreadsheet. The prompt should be entered one word per cell, with all spaces added manually to the beginning of words and each bit of punctuation on its own line.
The spreadsheet will output a single word: the next word in your sentence. It’s a good idea to stick to a simple sentence that you want the spreadsheet to add a word to. I went with “My cat is so—.” After you’ve entered your prompt, click Calculate Now in the Formulas tab to start crunching. Eventually, the spreadsheet will output the next word for you (in my case, “cute,” which is accurate.)
