Welcome to issue 13 of the Sheets Insiders membership program.
You can see the full archives here.
This week I’m sharing some interesting and thought-provoking reads:
Spreadsheet Related Reads
- The Apps Script OAuth consent screen is getting an update to become more granular. Users will be able to selectively grant or refuse access to each service the script requests. Read more
- Our friends at Apps Script Pulse published their 2024 annual roundup. Read more
- A tutorial on how to use Apps Script to transfer data between Sheets when it’s too big for the IMPORTRANGE formula. Read more
General Reads
- There are so many AI announcements these days that it’s impossible to keep up. Here’s one I missed from Google in December, about the launch of Deep Research AI, (available to Gemini Advanced subscribers).
- The next stage of AI after Gen AI is Agentic AI. These are digital agents that do work for us, e.g. customer service. We can expect to hear a LOT more about agentic AI in 2025 and see some significant releases in the coming weeks and months. This will be an interesting area that will impact how we all work.
- “Treat AI like an infinitely patient new coworker who forgets everything you tell them each new conversation” from the great article Good Enough Prompting
- Where we stand (in the US) on driverless cars. Although skepticism remains, a growing number of people now express positive feelings. Read more
- We’re on the cusp of a ChatGPT-moment for robotics.
Technology waits for no one
I have young children who are still 10+ years away from college and 15+ years away from starting their careers. And I truly have no idea what that will look like for them. It will certainly be very different to the landscape I navigated coming-of-age.
It’s important to be sceptical of the outlandish projections and doom mongering though.
Time and time again we’ve been over-promised and under-delivered on technology (take driverless cars for example, decades in the making but still a long way to go).
So take these with a pinch of salt…
- Pair humanoid robots with AI super-intelligence and where does that leave us mere mortals, in our weak, carbon-based bodies? Will inorganic, Silicon-based “life” become the next evolutionary step? ChatGPT is the “amoeba of AI evolution”
- Companies are developing AI-wearables that can read your mind. Yeah, nothing could possibly go wrong with this…
Whatever happens, it’s going to be quite the journey!