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 […]
TIL EY Has Commoditized Space
Is there any limit to the robust and ever-growing suite of services offered by professional services firms? Apparently not. As we’ll learn in a sec, not even the sky is the limit. It was less than a year ago that EY put $3 million Aussie bucks into a space business in partnership with Swinburne University […]
ChatGPT Isn’t Terminator for Accountants…Yet
Ed. note: the following is a guest post by Jack Castonguay, PhD, CPA, who has not yet been replaced by ChatGPT as far as we know. Or has he? Was ChatGPT sent to us from the future to rescue the industry from the pipeline crisis by filling open accounting jobs with cyborgs and sentient machines? […]
PwC Has a Fancy New AI Tool to Law Around With
Today is the day that PwC ushered in a new era for professional services: a global partnership with AI startup Harvey, offering PwC’s legal professionals “exclusive access” (that is, they are the only Big 4 firm who has it) to the platform. It’s a shame we had to scroll all the way to the bottom […]
The Accountant Shortage Has Finally Been Figured Out. You’re Not Underpaid, You’re Bored!
Ed. note: if you’re visiting from r/accounting, thanks for actually reading the article. Love ya. Another day, another article purporting to offer the solution to the precipitous drop in accounting talent over the past several years that doesn’t involve paying people more. “Young people” have been blamed for talent shortages long before an actual shortage […]
We Asked Twitter What’s the Second Most Important Issue in the Accounting Profession Right Now, Here’s What They Said
Bored of writing and talking about the dire accountant shortage and the consequences it could have on the entire financial system as we know it, the other day I tweeted a question to find out what else folks think is plaguing accounting. Thanks to everyone who chimed in, I know sometimes Twitter feels like shouting […]
No One Cares But Here Are PwC’s 2023 Metaverse Predictions Anyway
What’s next for the metaverse and what — if anything — should you do about it? PwC has answered the question no one is really asking in its 2023 metaverse predictions. These predictions are, as you’d expect, dumb made assuming that businesses and consumers alike will begin using the metaverse in earnest rather than making […]
Good News! You Don’t Have to Go to Work Tomorrow (In 20 Years)
You’ve probably seen this making the rounds on Reddit, Twitter, and whichever other dark corner of the internet you hang out in to commiserate with your fellow capital markets servants. It’s from FinanceBuzz’s 13 Jobs That Will Be Gone Within 20 Years: Like most article that claim accountants will be replaced by machines in 5-25 […]
Hear Me Out, Accounting Firms Should Add PvP and Achievements to the Metaverse
It’s 2022 and accounting firms are proudly buying up “real estate” in the metaverse, putting out self-congratulatory press releases about it like it’s supposed to make us think they’re ahead of the curve on technology. Really my first thought has always been “didn’t the Maryland Association of CPAs do this 14 years ago?” (They did) […]
KPMG’s New Metaverse Space is Like the First-Person Shooters You Played in 1999 But Worse
14 or 15 years ago I trolled Bill Sheridan of the Maryland Association of CPAs on Twitter about uncovering a weapons cache they’d stashed on CPA Island, a then-revolutionary virtual space in the game Second Life MACPA had set up for…accounting things. Back in 2008 CPA Island was the first (only? It never really caught […]
EY Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Is on Audit Quality With a Technology Investment
EY announced today it is making a $1 billion investment in audit technology just weeks after WSJ reported that the firm is in the process of splitting its audit and consulting arms. $13.6 billion of EY’s $40 billion global revenue last year came from audit. From EY: EY today announces an investment of more than […]
NASBA Is (Still) Considering Remote CPA Exam Testing Even With Virus Concerns Waning
There are big changes coming to the CPA exam in the future, but one thing that hasn’t changed much since 2004 is the process of testing at Prometric. When the exam went computerized at the turn of the century, gone were the massive gymnasiums and chicken tables of yore and in came the soul-crushing sterility […]
Prager Metis Just Spent $35k So They Can Service Clients In the Metaverse
We have officially arrived into the dystopian future ’80s sci-fi movies warned us about: accounting firms are now planting their flags on the metaverse. From The Wall Street Journal: Prager Metis International LLC, a New York-based accounting and advisory firm, on Friday said it opened a virtual three-story property on a site it bought for […]
The CPA Exam of the Future Includes the Flexibility to Adapt to … the Future?
In a move wholly uncharacteristic of the accounting profession, the benevolent overlords of the CPA exam are thinking ahead. WAY ahead. So far ahead we can’t even imagine what the world might look like by then. Here’s hoping you still have a job and Alexa has figured out how to turn my dining room Christmas […]
PwC Is Getting Into the Virtual Food Service Business
PwC learned me a new phrase today: digital spaghetti! dig•it•al spa•ghet•ti– the art of creating new words that describe something technical to educate your friends and co-workers; helpful when playing buzzword bingo in your next emerging technology discussion. Digital spaghetti terms share a characteristic of being relatively new and lack a universally agreed upon definition. […]
KPMG Vice Chair Thinks the Future of Audit Includes 100 Percent Testing
Let's pretend you're an alien who just landed on Earth and for some odd reason you decided accountants are the supreme beings of this planet, therefore you want to read all about them and clicked on over to Going Concern. "Audits?" you ask yourself. "What are those?" Currently, audits are designed to provide reasonable assurance, […]
Does Your Future of Work Include Wearing Wearables?
Perhaps you've heard the story of a troll young lady who calls herself a social media consultant caught between a punk and a hard place at a San Francisco bar with Google Glass on her face. Perhaps you read Jody Padar's story on Glass and accounting firms. Now we have a piece published on Deloitte's […]
PwC Will Probably Be the First Accounting Firm to Replace Interns With Robots
It sounds crazy now but just think, not that long ago we carried around shiny discs with only a dozen songs crammed on each one and would have thought you were nuts if you told us one day, you will have the entire Internet in your pocket and mostly use this technology to post filtered […]
Don’t Worry Everyone, Deloitte Totally Has This Future of Audits Thing Down
Exhibit A: Deloitte works w/ global regulators to shape policy and standards to help develop audit of the future #GR2013 http://t.co/3oZLBxB7kc — Deloitte (@Deloitte) January 6, 2014 This is courtesy the Big 4 firm that brought you Parmalat, Bear Stearns, MG Rover, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker… you get the point. But hey, shit happens […]
They’re Getting Ready to Change the CPA Exam Again (But You Shouldn’t Worry)
This is AICPA Board of Examiners Director Michael Decker from the Fall/Winter 2013 Uniform CPA Exam Alert, take note people: We are now embarking on a new Practice Analysis, a research study that will form the basis for the design and development of the next CPA Exam. The Practice Analysis helps to ensure the exam […]