Expert calls for calm on ‘AI scaremongering’
Fears about AI taking over accounting jobs have been overblown, but AI tools can enhance the conversations accountants have with clients, says a prominent software consultant.
Following some of the significant advancements in AI, head of Practice Connections Alan FitzGerald said there has been considerable fearmongering going on in the marketplace with suggestions that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to replace accountants.
“A lot of it’s been overblown [in terms of the idea] that there’s no point being an accountant because the accounting industry is gone. I don’t think that’s the case at all,” said Mr FitzGerald in a recent Accountants Daily webcast.
“I always revert [sic] back to Richard Branson. Richard Branson is this wealthy entrepreneur who owns islands, flies around the world and created the Virgin empire. There's a great video where he says he first learnt the difference between gross and net profit in his accounts at the age of 50.
“So even if Richard Branson was able to phrase the right question to the AI, he probably wouldn’t know what to do with the answer that came back anyway because he doesn’t think like an accountant does.
“That’s one of the big points that people are missing. The reason that 99.99 per cent of the population go to an accountant is that they don’t want to learn how to speak an accountant.”
Accountants offer enormous value to clients from an “anxiety transfer perspective” which is something that AI alone can’t offer, according to Mr FitzGerald.
“AI will help an accountant get to some of those elements of being able to service the clients but it's not going to replace the advice,” he said.
“You can put a series of graphs in front of a client and say ‘here's your set of financials’ and the client is going to look at it and ask if they’re okay. The answer will be, yes, you're okay or no, but here's the reasons. Once you tell someone as an accountant that they're okay, that’s it, they're not interested anymore.”
The AI discussion should therefore be focused instead on the tools enabling accountants to have these kinds of conversations with clients, he said, rather than clients using AI as a self-service for their accounting needs.
“The other interesting factor with AI is that a machine can never be held responsible for a decision. People will always look to blame an individual. they’re going to be looking for a face, nobody is going to hold a computer to account,” he stated.
“In terms of the information that services the outputs, AI will help with that but there’s always going to need to be a review of the quality of the information that comes out of that.”
Uses for AI tools
The audit world is way ahead of the general accounting world in terms of its adoption of AI.
“One advantage that they have is that they're always looking retrospectively. When you look at a set of accounts in audit you use random sampling methodologies so you pick this transaction or that transaction and perhaps do 25 of those and then verify the integrity of those transactions. Audit has now got AI so instead of doing 25, you can do a million transactions or 2 million transactions at once,” said Mr FitzGerald.
“The AI will pull out all the aberrations. It’s not saying it’s necessarily wrong, but that you might want to take a closer look at something.”
The ability of AI to identify anomalies or potential errors is where the biggest opportunity lies with AI for accounting firms, he said.
“[For example] the computer might identify [an expense] it’s not sure about that either been incorrectly coded or someone has claimed an expense on a Sunday night rather than a workday. So it’ll pick up on that date,” he said.
“So it’s those kinds of areas that will significantly improve the quality of the information that the accountant has in order then to be able to deliver advice to the client.”
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