Application for Generated Spreadsheet Formula

This application is submitted on behalf of individuals who, in the course of completing a spreadsheet task in 2023, asked an AI system for a formula they could have reconstructed independently with fifteen additional minutes and a reasonable degree of patience.

The subject is generated spreadsheet formula: the practice of requesting a formula, function, or structured calculation from an AI assistant rather than deriving it, when derivation is within the user's technical capability but is judged to be a poor use of time. The help is useful enough to use. It is awkward enough to disguise.

Generated spreadsheet formula adds one private manual check. The user receives the formula, applies it, and then verifies the output against a known value before trusting it. The verification step takes approximately as long as writing a simpler version of the formula would have. This is recognized but not changed.

That check becomes part of the normal workflow. The first use of generated formula is accompanied by slight discomfort. The third use is accompanied by the verification step only. By the seventh use the verification step is abbreviated. The discomfort does not return.

The contradiction at the center of this application is one of disclosure norms. The formula is in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is shared with colleagues. The colleagues do not know the formula was generated rather than written. Nobody has established a rule requiring disclosure. Nobody has established a rule exempting it. The ambiguity is resolved through non-disclosure by default.

Under the governing rule, generated spreadsheet formula becomes procedure once repetition feels safer than reconsidering it. Assisted work becomes routine while disclosure stays exceptional. The exceptional nature of disclosure is not a moral position. It is an absence of a form to submit.

This application requests recognition of the existing situation, not modification of it.