I unleashed AI on the Excel World Championship. It got ugly fast
If I can use AI like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT to solve the hardest problems at the Spreadsheet Super Bowl, does it still mean anything? Credit: Foundry At around the same time that a humanoid robot broke Usain Bolt’s record for the 100 meters, I was pushing the button to make people like Diarmuid Early irrelevant. Early, the winner of the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2025 competition, used brains, not brawn, to defeat two dozen other finalists in Las Vegas last December for just a few thousand dollars, plus bragging rights.
- ▪If I can use AI like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT to solve the hardest problems at the Spreadsheet Super Bowl, does it still mean anything?
- ▪Credit: Foundry At around the same time that a humanoid robot broke Usain Bolt’s record for the 100 meters, I was pushing the button to make people like Diarmuid Early irrelevant.
- ▪Early, the winner of the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2025 competition, used brains, not brawn, to defeat two dozen other finalists in Las Vegas last December for just a few thousand dollars, plus bragging rights.
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| Original publisher | PCWorld |
| Canonical URL | https://www.pcworld.com/article/3218001/i-unleashed-ai-on-the-excel-world-championship-it-got-ugly-fast.html |
| Publication time | Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-14T13:01:51.630Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-14T13:01:51.630Z |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
If I can use AI like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT to solve the hardest problems at the Spreadsheet Super Bowl, does it still mean anything? Credit: Foundry At around the same time that a humanoid robot broke Usain Bolt’s record for the 100 meters, I was pushing the button to make people like Diarmuid Early irrelevant. Early, the winner of the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2025 competition, used brains, not brawn, to defeat two dozen other finalists in Las Vegas last December for just a few thousand dollars, plus bragging rights. But I was able to take the same problems that Early and others had defeated, plug them into Microsoft Copilot, and handily defeat humanity’s best. Yeah, it’s depressing.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PCWorld.
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