Google's AI-enhanced spreadsheets are a taste of white-collar automation

In Google's commercial for its virtual assistant, people ask it to play dance music, videos, and set a timer. A new feature from the search giant that lets you ask questions of its online spreadsheets is less flashy, but it could be the start of something that has a huge impact on how some companies operate. Instead of creating charts from data the way office drones have done it for decades, you can now simply ask for what you want--for example by typing "histogram of 2017 ice cream sales." Google's machine-learning algorithms do the rest. The new feature joins one introduced last year called Explore that allows you to type phrases such as "what are average sales on Sundays" instead of creating formulas.