Tackling AI head-on

AAT Connect covered a wide range of issues and topics, and among the most popular was a pair of sessions focusing on the emergence of AI – as a threat and opportunity for those in accounting.

From data entry automation and analysis, to fraud detection and forecasting and predictive analysis, a series of speakers explained how, in the next half-decade, AI will change the way many routine accounting tasks will be done – and what that means for the profession.

Mid-tier perspective

At the ‘Let’s reboot: where are we with AI’ panel session, John Joon gave the perspective of mid-tier firms grappling with how best to harness the opportunities AI presents. “The Big Four probably are a bit of an exception because they can spend a million pounds on dedicated chatbots that do tax advisory work and make it easy for them,” he told delegates.

“And of course, we can’t do that, and probably most practices can’t do that. But equally, we can have access to tools that cost you $20 a month, and then you can do pretty much the same thing, even though you have to build some of the frameworks yourself. So I do think it levels the field.”

There is, however, a flip side to that: “What we’re starting to see is the gap between the technology haves and have-nots, whether you’re on that adoption curve, or wherever you feel you are, is getting bigger and bigger with every revolution we have. And we’re having this long tail of people not adopting technology, with businesses out there not using cloud accounting, which is completely bonkers as far as I’m concerned.”

Changing the game

But for those grasping the nettle of change, a presentation by Chris Downing, Director of Product Management for Accountants and Bookkeepers at Sage, offered a vision of new technology creating time and space to rethink what accountants are for, who they serve, and how they deliver for clients.

Downing pointed out that many accountants are already using AI, meaning that this debate is important now. “We’re all talking about AI as something in the future but if you’ve used Co-pilot or other similar tools, you’re already using it.”

Downing also laid out some key insights that accountants must be aware of. First, AI will become widespread across the industry in the next five years. Then, since accountants and bookkeepers tend to be tech optimists, AI will have a positive impact on work-life balance.

While practices that are leading the way on AI see it as a catalyst for growth and expect to hire more staff as a result an AI skills deficit will restrict the successful adoption of AI unless it’s dealt with.

Believe the hype?

As with every new technology, AI is currently wending its way along the Gartner hype cycle: excitement over a new innovation gives way to disillusionment before emerging into a healthier and more balanced picture where reality matches expectations. “We cannot miss the fact that these tools will be mainstream in our working lives on a day to day basis,” Downing explained.

He was clear, though, that there will be an impact: “Digital assistants will impact the way we interact with technology, and in turn that will impact how we interact with our clients,” he said, pointing out that AI’s use in areas including audit automation and tax planning may well deliver genuine results to solve the looming labour and capacity shortages in the industry.

Testing the limits

At the top of the market, it’s already making a big impact. Tahir Gupta of KPMG pointed out that although AI is already speeding up certain tasks, there are limits on how certain tools can be rolled out into the marketplace.

“I work in auditing specifically and our take on AI is that it’s very helpful in some respects: it makes things a lot quicker, speeds tasks up, and there’s so many tasks now which don’t actually require people to do them because AI can.”

However, Tahir pointed out that in the accounting and auditing space, managers have noticed that AI can’t help with everything. “We work with clients’ data, and using AI for those kinds of tasks can be very challenging because we’re putting other people’s data at risk.

“So there are limitations to how much we can use AI to help our work, and it’s really important to establish what we want to use AI for and what we can’t use it for, because we have a responsibility to deal with our clients’ data in a safe way and keep everything confidential.

“Given that, I think the main thing with AI is to really understand how far we can really go with it and how much we need to keep away from it as well.”

Ultimately, it takes bravery to adopt a new technology. But, as all the panelists agreed, accountants tend to be ready for any challenge that comes their way.

Christian Doherty is a business journalist and freelance writer for AAT.