Someone Ran GPT2 Entirely in a Spreadsheet
AI companies present their products as magical, but in reality they are just code and math. Don’t believe me? Someone has an AI model running in an Excel spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are all you need is a project by Ishan Anand that recreates GPT2, the predecessor to the technology behind ChatGPT, entirely in a single Excel spreadsheet. It’s the artificial intelligence equivalent of running Doom on an old smart refrigerator.
The file size is, as expected, 1.34GB, and it doesn’t download on a Mac or the web version of Excel – you’ll need Windows to make it work, ideally with a decent processor. And you can’t expect to use it the same way as larger chat-based language models. Obviously it won’t replace ChatGPT and shouldn’t. Mostly it’s just a great way to learn how large language models work.
You can get started by downloading the spreadsheet from Github . You add the prompt to the second sheet of the table. The hint must be entered one word per cell, with any spaces added manually at the beginning of words, and each bit of punctuation on its own line.
The table will show one word – the next word in your sentence. It is recommended that you stick to a simple sentence to which you want the table to add a word. I said: “My cat is like this…”. Once you’ve entered your hint, you click “Calculate Now” on the Formulas tab to begin your analysis. Eventually the spreadsheet will print out the next word for you (in my case, “cute,” and rightfully so).
The best part, however, is that you can now examine all the other worksheets and see the exact math that was used to guess what the next word should be. I’m not going to go into detail about this – it’s way out of my wheelhouse – but there are video tutorials on the website that do a great job of explaining the math and how the spreadsheet does it all. It’s hard to think of a more accessible way to see how large language models work.