Another year continues to keep humanity in tense. It seems that the pandemic wave is receding. But just as it unexpectedly brought the joy of remote work to a specific category of workers, it also took thousands of jobs. Companies and corporations worldwide are working to strengthen their positions in the new crisis, so they are actively reducing the staff that grew during the quarantine period.
The news about the next launch of artificial intelligence – Chat GPT and its omnipotence also does not add to the positive. The OpenAI company's project is beginning to be actively used in various fields. He is already called a killer of many professions. But does Chat GPT threaten the accounting profession?
On the company's website, it is stated that he can help with the work of:
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authors
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developers
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SEO specialists
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social networks
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accountants
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students
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game developers
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programmers
Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot that generates text in response to a user's question or request. Its artificial intelligence is trained on an array of data: books, articles, and websites with billions of words. The chat is configured so that a person can ask him a question in natural language by writing in the chat window and get a written answer. And it will not be just a general answer, but an answer relevant to a specific case or task.
According to preliminary assessments of users and experts, Chat GPT is capable of freeing the accountant from the following tasks in the future:
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writing formulas for Power BI or Tableau
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transaction accounting
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low-level computer programming.
With further improvement, this artificial intelligence will be able to free accountants from routine tasks. For example, accounts payable and receivable jobs will disappear or be significantly reduced. All exceptional questions that can appear will be directed by artificial intelligence to the appropriate specialists.
Journaling and financial reporting will be easier with cleaner input. If artificial intelligence is used to forecast sales, it can also be used to determine balances for a certain period. It will also make the accountant's job easier.
However, any accounting data generated by Chat GPT requires expert verification. Accountants themselves will be able to move from data processing to work related to providing advice and using their judgment. After all, no machine that has not worked in the company for a quarter or a year does not know its state of affairs and does not possess the appropriate level of context. Also, you should not rely on her judgment.
Interestingly, to study the topic of taxes, Chat GPT-3 provided a data set up to the year 2021. In order for this tool to better understand the topic and be able to provide quality information, its developers still need to deepen its knowledge in accounting. Therefore, this area is still safe and under the control of human accountants and tax consultants.
Chat GPT-3 also has limitations - many answers in accounting are judgments or depend on external circumstances. And artificial intelligence is able to give general instructions and is not able to perceive external properties that can affect decisions.
So, we can say that Chat GPT-3 is not yet a competitor to accountants and financial managers. But it is already a tool to facilitate certain routine work. The speed of development and launch of artificial intelligence is impressive - the OpenAI development company was founded in 2015, and in 2023 already introduced Chat GPT-3.
It is not known how quickly artificial intelligence will learn and improve. In any case, we advise you to invest in yourself, improve your knowledge and skills in the field of management and work with finances in order to stay one step ahead of artificial competitors and be ready for a change in the career landscape.
