6 ms·

For accountants, AI is like spreadsheets in the 1980s

28 points by hhs 4y ago

neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/R08qM https://archive.ph/R08qM
civilized 4y ago
> Accounting professionals will be able to spot trends and patterns that would have gone undiscovered without AI, thanks to AI’s capacity to handle enormous amounts of information rapidly and precisely. What exactly is the accounting professor talking about here? What can handle enormous amounts of accounting information rapidly and precisely?
- amluto 4y ago
  Even if they could handle accounting information precisely, large language models are anything but rapid. How many trillions of floating point operations would be needed to add two numbers correctly? Maybe AIs will be able to parse useful numbers out of a mess of documents in a year or two. The actual handling of the numbers will probably be left to less intelligent algorithms for the foreseeable future :)
- williamstein 4y ago
  Presumably ChatGPT is better at writing database queries or answering questions about a large Csv file than somebody who doesn’t know how to program. This was the subject of a PR talk last week be an openai cofounder - https://youtu.be/C_78DM8fG6E https://youtu.be/C_78DM8fG6E - my guess is something like that is what inspired this article.
- asdfman123 4y ago
  Tangential to your comment, but I can’t help but imagine the end result will just be deeper levels of needless complexity.
- kazinator 4y ago
  > What can handle enormous amounts of accounting information rapidly and precisely? The piece of code that AI writes. For instance "how can I find all transaction pairs whereby an equal amount is debited and credited, but three to five days apart?" AI will respond by writing the query in the accounting system's query language (and not actually trawl through the data itself).
bvan 4y ago
Sounds like the promise of the ‘paperless office’. Not holding my breath. Accounting doesn’t take very kindly to hallucinations or doubt.
monkellipse 4y ago
I was hoping for some domain-specific insight there. Instead, that was a thin article without much more than a blanket assertion. Could have copy/replaced “accountant” with pretty much any other knowledge worker.
- jonifico 4y ago
  Same feeling, it's incredible such a poor article can be behind a paywall
  - genericacct 4y ago
    https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is-written-by-artificial-intelligence/ https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is...
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  As an AI language model, my goal is to provide relevant and helpful information based on the input I receive. If the article I generated did not meet your expectations or contained errors, I apologize for any inconvenience caused.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    ... and I promise to always do it again. Everything you say to me goes to /dev/null once we terminate this chat.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      Surely you realize they’re using it all to train future models
ftxbro 4y ago
When LLMs get going, you will never be able to reach a human at a corporation by phone or email again. It will be AIs all the way down. Also the ones calling and emailing you from those corporations will be AIs.
- Nowado 4y ago
  You'll be calling the AI caller company to keep calling on your behalf though, so that's nice.
  - idiocrat 4y ago
    Yes, thought the same. Once the LLMs are going, why do I need to call anybody myself? Let AIs personas do everything on my behalf. Just make a good insurance policy, that if my AI persona screws something up, I will not be liable.
    - ftxbro 4y ago
      > Let AIs personas do everything on my behalf. > Just make a good insurance policy, that if my AI persona screws something up, I will not be liable. I feel like if they have the legal power to do things on your behalf, then you have to be legally liable if they screw something up.
      - chii 4y ago
        > I feel like if they have the legal power to do things on your behalf, then you have to be legally liable if they screw something up. just take a page out of corporations' way of doing things, and use a limited liability entity for everything. You get the benefits, but is not legally liable.
- majormajor 4y ago
  Until people share the secret phrases and methods to convince the LLMs to issue refunds [or whatever] and suddenly all the customer service agents are extra generous at the same time. ;)
siphon111 4y ago
As a founder building in the audit tech space the wall of inertia is starting to crumble quickly and the will of the industry to embrace it is already happening. Baby steps are over and customers are starting to take bigger steps than expected. Hype is large right now and the trough of disillusionment awaits but as we exit that trough practical supervised machine learning will be there first for its explainability but that will cede over time as the right types of data are better curated and the friction to get it drops. This post isn’t wrong that the role of an auditor will adapt and their expert knowledge better utilized for it. One thing I will say is never underestimate the intelligence of your auditors. Very smart bunch that learns how to maneuver a plethora of internal and external regulations that constrain their full abilities
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  All compliance work is fundamentally based on juris prudence, and I’m skeptical that any automated process could replace a human’s judgement when it comes to the interpretation of novel ideas required to do that job. I’m sure it could help make the work more efficient, but any fully automated process will either not accomplish the goals of the compliance regime, or will make compliance far more onerous than it needs to be, or a mixture of both.
pmarreck 4y ago
I can't reply to Neonate's comment for some reason but that archive.ph link leads to an SSL error EDIT: I got in. Not worth it. Incredibly lame piece.
- kmoser 4y ago
  Yep, replace "accounting" with virtually any other field and the same vague assertions apply: AI will help you spot trends, etc. I'm wondering if an AI wrote that article?
  - genericacct 4y ago
    https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is-written-by-artificial-intelligence/ https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is...
chx 4y ago
So who goes to prison when the stochastic parrot botches the accounting which it obviously will?
lee101 4y ago
[dead]
gdiamos 4y ago
paywalled :(
- dundarious 4y ago
  Prefix the url with https://12ft.io/ https://12ft.io/
anigbrowl 4y ago
I am guessing it is going to have huge impact on corporate fraud detection.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
At least spreadsheets didn't hallucinate.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  Sure they do. I recently found out, I'f we do "reduce decimal digits" in excel, it's only done on view, not on actual cell data. What happened was, I was preparing a draft balance sheet, it had cells which were long decimals so we set it to 2 decimals. The balance l=h matched but if we manually took the figures, there was founding error, like 1-3 bucks. Took me days to figure out.

28 points by hhs 4y ago

https://archive.ph/R08qM https://archive.ph/R08qM

> Accounting professionals will be able to spot trends and patterns that would have gone undiscovered without AI, thanks to AI’s capacity to handle enormous amounts of information rapidly and precisely. What exactly is the accounting professor talking about here? What can handle enormous amounts of accounting information rapidly and precisely?

amluto 4y ago
Even if they could handle accounting information precisely, large language models are anything but rapid. How many trillions of floating point operations would be needed to add two numbers correctly? Maybe AIs will be able to parse useful numbers out of a mess of documents in a year or two. The actual handling of the numbers will probably be left to less intelligent algorithms for the foreseeable future :)
williamstein 4y ago
Presumably ChatGPT is better at writing database queries or answering questions about a large Csv file than somebody who doesn’t know how to program. This was the subject of a PR talk last week be an openai cofounder - https://youtu.be/C_78DM8fG6E https://youtu.be/C_78DM8fG6E - my guess is something like that is what inspired this article.
asdfman123 4y ago
Tangential to your comment, but I can’t help but imagine the end result will just be deeper levels of needless complexity.
kazinator 4y ago
> What can handle enormous amounts of accounting information rapidly and precisely? The piece of code that AI writes. For instance "how can I find all transaction pairs whereby an equal amount is debited and credited, but three to five days apart?" AI will respond by writing the query in the accounting system's query language (and not actually trawl through the data itself).

bvan 4y ago

Sounds like the promise of the ‘paperless office’. Not holding my breath. Accounting doesn’t take very kindly to hallucinations or doubt.

monkellipse 4y ago

I was hoping for some domain-specific insight there. Instead, that was a thin article without much more than a blanket assertion. Could have copy/replaced “accountant” with pretty much any other knowledge worker.

jonifico 4y ago
Same feeling, it's incredible such a poor article can be behind a paywall
- genericacct 4y ago
  https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is-written-by-artificial-intelligence/ https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is...
fnordpiglet 4y ago
As an AI language model, my goal is to provide relevant and helpful information based on the input I receive. If the article I generated did not meet your expectations or contained errors, I apologize for any inconvenience caused.
- kazinator 4y ago
  ... and I promise to always do it again. Everything you say to me goes to /dev/null once we terminate this chat.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Surely you realize they’re using it all to train future models

ftxbro 4y ago

When LLMs get going, you will never be able to reach a human at a corporation by phone or email again. It will be AIs all the way down. Also the ones calling and emailing you from those corporations will be AIs.

Nowado 4y ago
You'll be calling the AI caller company to keep calling on your behalf though, so that's nice.
- idiocrat 4y ago
  Yes, thought the same. Once the LLMs are going, why do I need to call anybody myself? Let AIs personas do everything on my behalf. Just make a good insurance policy, that if my AI persona screws something up, I will not be liable.
  - ftxbro 4y ago
    > Let AIs personas do everything on my behalf. > Just make a good insurance policy, that if my AI persona screws something up, I will not be liable. I feel like if they have the legal power to do things on your behalf, then you have to be legally liable if they screw something up.
    - chii 4y ago
      > I feel like if they have the legal power to do things on your behalf, then you have to be legally liable if they screw something up. just take a page out of corporations' way of doing things, and use a limited liability entity for everything. You get the benefits, but is not legally liable.
majormajor 4y ago
Until people share the secret phrases and methods to convince the LLMs to issue refunds [or whatever] and suddenly all the customer service agents are extra generous at the same time. ;)

siphon111 4y ago

As a founder building in the audit tech space the wall of inertia is starting to crumble quickly and the will of the industry to embrace it is already happening. Baby steps are over and customers are starting to take bigger steps than expected. Hype is large right now and the trough of disillusionment awaits but as we exit that trough practical supervised machine learning will be there first for its explainability but that will cede over time as the right types of data are better curated and the friction to get it drops. This post isn’t wrong that the role of an auditor will adapt and their expert knowledge better utilized for it. One thing I will say is never underestimate the intelligence of your auditors. Very smart bunch that learns how to maneuver a plethora of internal and external regulations that constrain their full abilities

AmericanChopper 4y ago
All compliance work is fundamentally based on juris prudence, and I’m skeptical that any automated process could replace a human’s judgement when it comes to the interpretation of novel ideas required to do that job. I’m sure it could help make the work more efficient, but any fully automated process will either not accomplish the goals of the compliance regime, or will make compliance far more onerous than it needs to be, or a mixture of both.

pmarreck 4y ago

I can't reply to Neonate's comment for some reason but that archive.ph link leads to an SSL error EDIT: I got in. Not worth it. Incredibly lame piece.

kmoser 4y ago
Yep, replace "accounting" with virtually any other field and the same vague assertions apply: AI will help you spot trends, etc. I'm wondering if an AI wrote that article?
- genericacct 4y ago
  https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is-written-by-artificial-intelligence/ https://medianism.org/2019/02/20/1-3-of-bloomberg-content-is...

chx 4y ago

So who goes to prison when the stochastic parrot botches the accounting which it obviously will?

lee101 4y ago

[dead]

gdiamos 4y ago

paywalled :(

dundarious 4y ago
Prefix the url with https://12ft.io/ https://12ft.io/

anigbrowl 4y ago

I am guessing it is going to have huge impact on corporate fraud detection.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

At least spreadsheets didn't hallucinate.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
Sure they do. I recently found out, I'f we do "reduce decimal digits" in excel, it's only done on view, not on actual cell data. What happened was, I was preparing a draft balance sheet, it had cells which were long decimals so we set it to 2 decimals. The balance l=h matched but if we manually took the figures, there was founding error, like 1-3 bucks. Took me days to figure out.