*Team Member Spotlight*
As a recruiter with a background in IT, I find it important to consider technological improvements as they affect the job market. Lately while working at Carter Mackenzie International, I've been thinking about how accounting and finance roles will be supplemented heavily with AI soon. Will it eventually become a requirement for employment? AI made significant leaps and bounds over the past few years, breaking into various industries. from expressive works such as art and film to agricultural tasks involving irrigation and fertilization. Bearing in mind such complicated and skill-intensive projects have been accomplished with the assistance of machine learning, it would be unsurprising to me that accounting and finance will be overhauled. Big 4 firms have already adopted AI in some form. This improved services for their clients by utilizing machine learning to review documents, extract unstructured data, and analyze Big Data sets as part of the auditing process. Smaller firms have started to use AI tools to streamline the accounting process, where expenses, account reconciliations, and financial reports are automatically generated. AI has entered the automation space and it's here to stay, but will it go further than that? Many articles and videos have a ‘doom and gloom’ slant on the topic of artificial intelligence, to the point where robotic, dystopian themes from Terminator, The Matrix, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are seen as prophetic. Do I think AI will completely replace people in accounting and finance? Absolutely not. Machine learning is imperfect. Such imperfections are not exclusive to artistic mistakes, such as generating a painting of someone with disproportionate hands. It’s within the realm of possibility for AI to make errors in the accounting and finance world, too. AI will be a tool like any other-- one professionals utilize to speed up the automation processes. However, a machine’s work will always have to be checked and potentially corrected by a human being. AI will not replace skilled professionals, but professionals will have to know and understand AI and incorporate it into their skillset very soon. #AI #DigitalTranformation #FinancialServices #Accounting