Can we keep pace with the runaway AI train?

Can we keep pace with the runaway AI train?

Artificial intelligence is naturally going to have a huge impact on firms and finance leaders but how soon will it all begin to look a little different?

While all the processes and procedures still need to be put into place, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to change everything. And the train has already left the station.

That was the message at the appropriately named Is AI really going to change everything? session at the Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping, which was chaired by 2020 Innovation’s Billie Mcloughlin and featured John Toon of Beaver & Struthers, Nicolai Thomson of Jenesys AI and Will Rush of XBert as panellists.

It was a topic on a lot of lips across the show hall, with the buzz around AI having stepped up a notch since last year as firms and finance leaders looked to embrace the change and plot their next steps.

People like dealing with people
The foursome looked at the importance of the human touch amid the rise of AI, with Rush noting that people like dealing with people.

“I think it’s the same in the accounting world,” he added. “You still want to have that human connection and that human interaction. Nobody likes going on a website and speaking to a chat bot.”

Toon countered that the “entrepreneurs of the future” – teenagers and people in their early 20s – are “much more comfortable dealing with technology and much more comfortable interacting with a chat bot than maybe other people are”.

“They’re also placing much more confidence and reliance on the output of those, whether it’s right or wrong or reliable.

“Those are some of the challenges I think we, as firms, from a strategy point of view, need to overcome because we need to be trying to get into those people and saying that chat bot technology, at the moment is pretty base level. We know what we’re doing and if we don’t do that, then there is a serious problem.”

Thomson doesn’t believe AI will ever actually replace humans, noting that there’s a “huge amount of institutional knowledge that each of our people in our firms have”.

“A part of the role of AI is: if there’s a transfer of that institutional knowledge that can start to take place, then how does that reinvent the role that our team plays? I don’t think that will ever end.”

He added: “It’s an augmented service, it always will be, and it’s about our human creativity. What can we do – not just with the time that gets freed up, but if data starts to become real time if we’ve got higher levels of accuracy – to create services that were not possible before? Think really big.”

Technology fallacy
Discussing gripes of his, Thomson noted that people expecting AI to be 100% accurate is up there.

Toon agreed, touching on the “technology fallacy” that we also see in the self-driving car market at the moment.

“We expect self-driving cars to never have an accident and mow someone down. The reality is, human beings are incredibly imperfect. People die on the roads as a consequence of our ineffectiveness all the time. The principal is the same in bookkeeping.

“We do a shed load of audit work in our firm and the whole reason that you’ve got auditors is because people can’t do bookkeeping and accounting problems. It’s a fundamental concept and so, AI is going to be more accurate than what we can do – maybe it isn’t at the moment, in some instances, and it depends on the applications of what you’re doing – but there is this technology fallacy where we kind of expect perfection.”

Good enough to use right now
Toon added that one of things that holds businesses back when it comes to technology adoption in general “is that we’re looking for the optimum solution rather than: ‘It’s good enough right now, let’s get it in and let’s do it’.”

Mcloughlin echoed it being gradual, adding: “We’re improving a certain amount each time we implement the change – we’re not making people do things differently. We’re improving the way people do things.

“It can be a little bit frustrating when the speed of adoption is slower because it doesn’t quite do this one thing yet. Actually, have you implemented the nine things it does do? And if not, why not before you concentrate on the one thing it doesn’t?”

Rush noted that it’s been 15 years since cloud technology came in and “we’ve still got people who are on desktop-based ledgers”.

“It’s not there yet. Compared to Australia, New Zealand and those other industries, the UK is pretty far behind when it comes to adoption of those sorts of things. So, I think look at it as a continuation of that change and just adopting the tools that are right for now rather than looking at solving that gold standard.”

Adopting AI in the short term
Addressing the Circle Stage crowd, Mcloughlin said she believed “everybody here today needs to adopt some element of AI in the short-term future”.

“What I would say is it doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing solution, which I think is probably holding many of you. It feels like it needs to be a full-service solution or it needs to get the right answers 100% of the time, and actually implementing it bit by bit, you will see dramatic changes over time.”

Rush also encouraged people to “work with us” when it comes to making a change with AI.

“When we’re reaching out to you to ask you a question or see if you need help, don’t just ignore that email and don’t just ignore that phone call – come and speak to us and actually work with us on how to implement it. We can really help you.

“Involving the team is a massive one. It doesn’t need to be led by the partner or the person that runs that business – it should always be the people that are going to be in the weeds day-to-day, actually using that product all the time.

“They should be the ones who contribute towards making the decision on which software to use but also getting involved from the get-go.”

Toon agreed, adding: “The two key departments that should never be involved in change management in a practice are the partners and the IT department.”

Will AI change everything?
Concluding the session, Mcloughlin asked the question they’d all been chipping away at for the past 25 minutes: “Do you really think AI is going to change everything?”

Thomson said: “I do but it has to be in the context of how do we redefine what human expertise actually does? There is a transfer that needs to take place from operator to analyst – that’s the transition, that’s the opportunity – and it has to come back to the client.

“I hear from a lot of people that they want to do more advisory work and less compliance. That’s fine but you’re going to need data to equip you and what your clients need is for this to come faster, sooner and more real-time.”

Toon was also a yes, adding: “It’s not going to happen as quickly as maybe we keep thinking it might do but what is fundamentally going to drive this is a few things.

“One is competition in our marketplace from the future and from non-accountants. It’s going to be our future entrepreneurs that are coming to the market, who are in their teens or early 20s, and demanding different types of services.

“The big challenge that we probably haven’t talked about is the fact that, if you automate a lot of things and you make things so much more efficient, then the compliance work that we do is going to be commoditised and that’s going to drive the price down, which is going to be really challenging for practices.”

Changing the way you work
Rush agreed, stressing that it’s “not going to change the work that you do but it is going to change the way that you do the work”.

“A good analogy I heard is that we’re at the invention of the motor car. At the moment, when it comes to AI, we still need to put all of the processes and procedures on. We need to put the safety belts on it. We need to put in place the rules of the road and how you’re utilising it, things like that. Of course, you need to have those policies in place.”

He added that while it’s “not going to be today or tomorrow”, it “might be in a year’s time, a couple of years’ time, when we really see the huge impact that I think AI can have on this industry. But you can start now – and if you don’t start now, you’re going to get left behind”.

Mcloughlin echoed the sentiment, calling it “one of those things where the longer you leave it, the harder it’s going to be to catch up”.

“The train’s already left the station and it’s going to be much harder to try to catch that train later on.”

This article is sourced from the following link:

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/accounting-software/can-we-keep-pace-with-the-runaway-ai-train