I unleashed AI on the Excel World Championship. It got ugly fast

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. I unleashed AI on the Excel World Championship. 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? 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.