Artificial intelligence isn't here to take accounting jobs — but it can already do big chunks of them, and accountants can't afford to be complacent in the face of that, according to AI expert Radhika Dirks.
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"The harsh truth is that the value of 80% of your skills have just dropped to zero," said Dirks, an AI consultant who has started three separate successful AI companies. "The good news is that the value of the remaining 20% has skyrocketed. This is the expertise that you picked up by being out there in your profession that AI can duplicate. This is your intuition. This is your ability to see that something is wrong, even if you can't explain why, and to know where to look."
Accountants can't afford to rest on all those laurels, however; according to Dirks, they need to ask themselves, "If AI can do everything I can do, how can I amplify myself?"
To start, both firms and accountants need to get up to speed — learning about the technology, updating their skills, and creating thoughtful approaches to integrating AI into their practices — and then keep up to speed, as AI rapidly changes.
"The pace of this technology has been incredible — so you need to continually update your strategy and your team's skills," she said. "This is the time to thoughtfully transform your business — but also yourself."
This is all the more important because AI has taken the modern world by storm, and none of the normal guardrails have had a chance to adapt.
"Our laws haven't been updated, our institutions haven't been updated, and most important, our minds haven't been updated," Dirks explained. "Every powerful technology has the potential for catastrophe. We have to treat AI with the same care as, say, nuclear technology."
Besides making sure that individual accountants are skilled in AI, accounting firms need to start thinking about potential investments in the technology.
And while no one expects the average firm to invest a billion dollars in AI the way PwC did, Dirks suggested that they can learn from the Big Four firm's approach.
"They're empowering processes, teams and customers with AI," she explained; the firm's top internal uses cases are in IT, finance and marketing, where their gains range from 20-50% improvement. As an example, she cited a project PwC undertook to revamp Southwest Airlines' crew management system; thanks to AI, they were able to complete a project that normally would have taken anywhere from six months to a year in just five weeks.
Speaking later in the same session, BDO USA CEO Wayne Berson highlighted the Top 10 Firm's own benefits from artificial intelligence.
"Today, AI is proving to be a powerful addition to our culture of innovation and a valuable addition to our approach to client service," he said. "Since we launched ChatBDO, this tool has saved 12,000 users 600,000 hours on everyday tasks over two years. Regular users have increased their billable hours, without significantly increasing their hours spent — saving countless hours spent on administrative tasks."
"Everyone here has an opportunity to use AI to enhance your service capabilities and to improve your businesses," he told the attendees.
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