What AI Means for the Accounting Profession: Part II

Artificial Intelligence has matured from technology buried in computer science labs using complex coding techniques to more common algorithms and supporting technologies used as part of the design strategy of new generation products. Many of the developers have known of AI techniques for years but did not have a practical way to apply the algorithms because the compute overhead was too high, the sample of data was too small and the number of techniques that needed to be applied made the code too complex. With centralized computing in SaaS applications and cloud data centers, AI has become much more practical and accurate. We see a number of products that are running crude AI today and vendors that are pretty far along in their use of AI. Getting products that apply to small and medium businesses are more of a challenge, but we see efforts at Intuit, Xero, BQE Core, Citrix ShareFile, Thomson, CCH and most other products that apply to the CPA profession and to small and medium businesses.