This is the second cartoon from the AI & the Actuary theme — the collision between AI and actuarial work.

Every firm has announced its AI strategy. Every team has someone who has "started using AI." And somewhere, in every office, someone is quietly doing the whole thing in Excel first and then asking AI if it agrees — just so they can tick the box.

The profession's attachment to spreadsheets is not a weakness. It is a survival instinct honed over decades of being told that the new tool will change everything, only to discover that it crashes on the edge case your Excel sheet handled in 2014.

The Politics Actuary is a weekly cartoon series about actuaries, AI, the profession, and the absurdities of overregulation. It follows a dad who can't switch off his professional brain, a family who've learned to live with it, and an inexplicable pet crocodile.

Any resemblance to real actuaries is entirely intentional.

Previous cartoons: #1 Record Investment | #2 Y-Axis Trick | #3 Prompt Engineering | #4 Transparency Request | #5 Define Everyone | #6 Long-Term Assumption