Would You Trust An AI To Look After Your Business Finances?

Artificial intelligence is on the rise. I write and read extensively on AI, and one gets the impression that this is a zero-sum proposition: Either everything improves and we will live in a Utopia — or we face an imminent apocalypse.

Thankfully, things are not so black and white. Automation, long seen as a killer of jobs, may displace fewer people than experts once believed. Advanced algorithms promise to deliver us from routine, tedious tasks that are part and parcel of running a business, without running the business for us. Further, AI is far more accurate than the human mind for certain tasks — the perfect detail-oriented worker.

Yet, efficacy aside, this speculation raises an interesting question: Can you trust an AI to manage your organization’s finances? If you choose to use an AI, will there even be space for you to continue running the financial side of your business?

The answer, believe it or not, is yes to both questions. But as with everything, there are caveats.

AI Is Far More Limited Than You Think

When it comes to AI, overestimating current capabilities is the most common sin. The widespread perception of AI as a world-ending, malevolent superintelligence isn’t accurate; this is only one category of AI (artificial general intelligence, or AGI), and a rather fanciful one at that.

An AI can’t really run your whole business for you, at least not in the near future. Until machine learning becomes more refined, bots can’t deal with the unpredictability of real life. AI can carry out lower-level functions, like keeping your books, tracking your expenses and profits, generating fancy reports and even suggesting courses of action. “Revenue is up this year,” your AI may say, “but due to tariffs on solar panels, it may be down in the next fiscal year.” Consider diversifying to other clean energy sources, like residential wind turbines or biogas digesters.

Still, AI’s Thought Processes Are Unclear

Another lingering criticism of AI is its lack of empathy. When dealing with humans, we can assume that a person is working off the same emotional wavelengths as us, allowing us to empathize with each other.

A financial reporting AI could tweak billions of different parameters and connections to analyze variables like politics, competitors, margins, etc. The problem is that it can’t explain the thought process behind an answer. If human analysts suggest that you buy stock in manufacturers of electric vehicle battery packs, they can justify their conclusion by analyzing market demand, benchmark indexes and raw material prices.

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