Excel 2.0
Handing every user raw model access without governance repeats the mistakes we made with spreadsheets.
The Reinhart-Rogoff paper. The London Whale. Fidelity Magellan losing $2.6 billion to a missing minus sign.
All Excel errors.
For 30 years, the global financial system has run on spreadsheets passed by email, edited by analysts, and trusted because the cells looked right. No audit trail. No governance. No version control. Just vibes, formulas, and seniority.
I keep thinking about that as I watch the diffusion gap widen.
Foundation models are advancing on a curve enterprises can't absorb let alone control. New capabilities every week. New providers every month. Meanwhile most companies are still arguing about which pilot to greenlight.
But here's what the hype keeps glossing over: putting raw model access in front of every user without governance is just Excel 2.0. Same pattern. Same risk. Same eventual blow-ups.
Anaplan built a multi-billion dollar business doing exactly this for spreadsheets. Their entire pitch was that Excel needed friction. Governance, audit trails, structured workflow. So they sold the friction. AI is about to need its own version of that company.
The winners in the diffusion gap won't be the ones who hand users the most powerful model. They'll be the ones who wrap it in the most defensible workflow. Audit trails. Consistent context. Versioned prompts. Provenance. Approval flows. The boring stuff.
Excel isn't to blame, as much as AI won't be. They just shouldn't have been left alone with the world's finances.
References:
First posted on LinkedIn.