Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Australian Tax Lawyer Built an AI Tax Research Assistant That Will Never Get Sick of Your Questions

Say hi to Ailira, everyone, aka “Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Resource Assistant.” She’s here to help with all your tax research needs. Well, in Australia, anyway:

Ailira, or “Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Resource Assistant” is so clever at tax that her creator believes she could help prompt the end of human tax agents. And within two months, she will answer questions in other areas of Australian law.

Ailira is the brainchild of Adelaide-based tax lawyer Adrian Cartland. The story goes that with no professional tax background, his girlfriend Sarah, a speech pathology student, scored 73 per cent on a first-year university tax exam with just 30 minutes’ training and Ailira at her side.

“Your tax agents will probably be gone within five years,” said a confident Mr Cartland.

Gauntlet. Thrown. Also, please gaze upon this photo of Adrian Cartland looking smug about his creation. I don’t blame him! It sounds pretty useful.

Ailira is especially interesting because, although she functions like a search engine, you can ask her questions like you ask your know-it-all colleague.

“The one thing we had difficulty with is that people are so used to doing keyword searches that they struggle to ask a question as you would to another human.

“So we did some upgrades of Ailira’s interface to encourage people to treat Ailira like a human, more in plain English.”

Right, except that “plain English” when asking questions about taxes isn’t really English.

But no matter, the key thing about artificial intelligence for tax research is that it’ll never get tired of answering your boring questions. Even your smartypants colleague will eventually want to go home.

[The Australian via TaxProf]

Image: iStock/pichet_w

Latest Accounting Jobs--Apply Now:

Have something to add to this story? Give us a shout by email, Twitter, or text/call the tipline at 202-505-8885. As always, all tips are anonymous.

Related articles

sketch of a robot among business people to signify AI replacing workers

PwC Chief Products & Technology Officer Says Not to Worry, They Don’t Want to Replace You With AI

A couple days ago, NYT published a piece asking an important question: Who will protect the workers losing their jobs to AI? The article references a May 16 senate subcommittee hearing chaired by Senator Richard Blumenthal at which OpenAI’s Sam Altman is told Mr. Blumenthal’s greatest nightmare is AI causing massive job loss. “There will […]

man holding a phone speaking to a chatbot

ChatGPT Can Pass the CPA Exam But Here’s What It Can’t Do (Yet)

If the headlines are to be believed, humanity is mere months away from being enslaved by artificial intelligence or, at the very least, being permanently unemployed (cue sounds of the Going Concern audience celebrating here). You may have seen clickbait articles about entire marketing departments being turfed in favor of ChatGPT (we never liked the […]