Comment by falcor84

14 hours ago

I'm sure that any accounting trick that an LLM can think of is something that is also used by some shady human accountants. The proper response should not be to avoid/prohibit AI but to improve the validation mechanisms.

7 comments

falcor84

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o11c  14 hours ago

Counterpoint: if you detect a human accountant doing this, you can take action against the human. Computers will never meaningfully take the blame, and unfortunately usually mean not blaming any human either.

  • stillpointlab  13 hours ago

    > you can take action against the human

    I think that will depend on a case-by-case. I don't have any recent examples but I recall someone trying to sue one of those strip-mall tax preparation franchises over incorrect filings. My understanding is that the documents that you sign when you enroll in those services are pretty strictly in the favor of the company. I doubt you could ever go after the specific "human" that made the error even if it was maliciously done.

    In the same way, if you pay for a tax service that uses AI agents, what you can and cannot "take action" for will probably be outlined in the terms of service that you accept when you sign up.

    I would guess millions of people already use software based tax filing services (e.g. turbo tax) where no human at all is in the loop. I don't understand how swapping in an LLM significantly changes the liability in those cases. The contract will be between you and the entity (probably a corporation), not you and "computers".

    Worth stating I am NOT a lawyer.

  • falcor84  14 hours ago

    But still - if there's a way to detect accountants doing it - let's focus on making that detection even easier.

    On a related note, can we use something like GAN here, with auditor AIs trained against accountant AIs?

  • ori_b  13 hours ago

    The person using the tool is the accountant, regardless of whether the tool is a calculator and sheet of paper, QuickBooks, or an LLM.

OtherShrezzing  13 hours ago

No, I think in this particular case the proper response is for honest companies to avoid any systems which invent nonexistent transactions to reconcile books.

Most businesses don’t want to misrepresent their books, irrespective of the existence of shady accountants.