The Certified Accountant and Artificial Intelligence – Competition, Antagonism or Partnership?

Abstract

Considering that the trend is to extend the use of artificial intelligence (AI), the accounting expertise offices and the financial accounting departments – as reliable ecosystems – face unique challenges. By its characteristics, AI generates many benefits and also possible related risks. The new technology is particulary complex, this is why extensive researches, testings and special approaches will be necessary in order to define the place of chatbots in accounting. It is about a vision in which not only their integration as (virtual) members of the financial accounting area must be analysed, but also their adaptation and integration in the company’s, the institution’s general management must be followed. In this respect, some authors estimate that AI increases the complexity and the quality of the financial accounting information, which it shall present in a new light, as an elite informational resource. For the expertise office or the financial accounting department, beside the concepts of business intelligence (BI) and human intelligence (HI), another one will be inserted, that of artificial intelligence, which comes with a whole series of challenges. If we carefully analyze the way in which artificial intelligence reported to the certified (professional) accountant, we distinguish three big situations: competition, antagonism or partnership. The first two approaches of the AI impact on the financial accounting field do not seem encouraging at all, considering the risks and the multiple existing questions. A third way, more balanced, is foreshadowed, in which a favourable partnership is built over time, that does not bring a storm in the accounting expertise office, but the “breeze” of a productive collaboration in the interest of beneficiaries.

Keywords

• artificial intelligence
• certified accountant
• competition
• antagonism
• partnership
• algorithms
• chatbot