Status Quo -||- Augmented Symbolic -||- Grounded, Model Driven?

The future of information processing spans a possible spectrum from symbolic spreadsheets, to AI‑augmented spreadsheets, to fully grounded pragmatic systems powered by neuro‑semantic and neuro‑pragmatic AI.

As I see it, there is a spectrum of three broad possible alternatives for processing information going forward.  Those broad alternatives appear to be:

  1. Spreadsheet Centric (Status quo): Continue using electronic spreadsheets as the primary mechanism for organizing, calculating, and reporting information. This approach remains symbolic and manual, with limited structure and no semantic or pragmatic grounding.
  2. Spreadsheet + AI (Augmented Symbolic): Retain electronic spreadsheets as the core environment but use AI to assist/augment with formulas, modeling, cleaning, and analysis. This enhances productivity but still operates within a symbolic, ungrounded paradigm.
  3. Pragmatic Systems + AI (Grounded, Model Driven): Transition to pragmatic systems that encode meaning, evidence, constraints, and real‑world grounding; supported by AI for model creation, semantic alignment, and pragmatic reasoning. This shifts information processing from symbolic manipulation to semantic and pragmatic truth‑preserving operations.

When I first began working as an accountant/auditor, the "spreadsheets" we used were literally paper. I remember the transition from paper spreadsheets to electronic spreadsheets.  Now we are very likely to go  through another change.  The probability of remaining in the status quo (#1) is pretty low. The transition will very likely be a bell shaped curve with some early adopters and laggards.  Further, the transition could be done in steps.  To me personally, #2 is a temporary stepping stone for a lot of people that don't actually understand artificial intelligence well.  Longer term, #3 is where we are going to end up in my view.

Pragmatic systems + AI; grounded, model driven require the most cultural and change‑management effort, but once built, they deliver the highest ease of use, lowest error rates, strongest grounding, and the only architecture that scales into the long-term future.

But what are the considerations? This is what comes into my mind:
  • Software: The software that I am contemplating does not exist yet. In order to change to a new paradigm, that new paradigm needs to exist.  Right now, there is no #3 option available; #2 is where most software development effort appears to be; and in terms of #1 it is beginning to look like a crisis (e.g. audit failures, Big 4 building new audit platforms) but it does not seem like a full fledged crisis.
  • Change management: Change is hard.  Changing from #1 to #2 is way easier than changing from #1 to #3.  Changing from #1 to #2; and then needing to change from #2 to #3 would very likely be easier to manage, but perhaps more costly.
  • Cultural change requirement: What is happening is a paradigm shift, not an incremental change.
  • Scalability: Organizations have been trying to scale electronic spreadsheets for 50 years unsuccessfully.  The outcome from #2 is still an unscalable spreadsheet.  #3 is very likely scalable but that has not yet been proven.  There are a few ways #3 might play out. There could be #3 using proprietary approaches or #3 using global open industry standards.  Obviously using standards is more scalable, but it is possible to build proprietary systems that are also scalable within an organization.
  • Industrialization: Relating to scalability is the possibility of industrialization which can lead to massive process improvements and cost reductions. If industrialization occurs, process improvement potential will be massive.
  • Holistic impact: The potential for enterprise wide holistic impact is great.  If artificial intelligence is brough into the enterprise well, the upside will be big.  But because the change impacts so many areas of the enterprise, every enterprise large and small; achieving that strategic outcome can be very hard.  On the other hand, if one views this change in isolated silos, like the impact of AI on individual spreadsheets only; the benefits can be very hard to see and measure. 
No one knows exactly how this "transformation" or "paradigm shift" will ultimately play out.  But it is very clear that the transformation/paradigm shift is underway.  Like other transformations/paradigm shifts; there will be winners and there will be losers.  All the hype surrounding artificial intelligence is not really helpful.  Buyer best beware.


Spreadsheets remain dominant because of inertia, universality, lack of alternative, and they are so easy to use; not because they are technically fit for purpose.  Their probability of persistence is high in the short run, but their probability of remaining foundational declines and will decay as accounting infrastructure shifts toward new platforms and ecosystems, declarative logic, artificial intelligence, and model‑driven representations.

Based on the transition from paper-based spreadsheets to electronic spreadsheets; I would say that in the short term, say 0 to 10 years, spreadsheets remain foundational because the profession is structurally dependent on them and no specific alternative currently exists.  Longer term, say 10 to 20 years, spreadsheets will have lost foundational status because accounting becomes a semantic, model‑driven discipline.

The more mission critical a spreadsheet is, the higher the probability that the spreadsheet will be transitioned to a grounded, model driven system (e.g. #3 above).

Excel and Google sheets will be with us forever, they are absolutely useful tools for some work.  But for other work they are far less well suited.

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