Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Five days after being online, the number of registered users exceeded 1 million; in just two months, the number of monthly active users exceeded 100 million. The popularity of ChatGPT has not only opened up people's beautiful imagination of artificial intelligence, but also caused a lot of concern. Will machines replace humans? In particular, will all kinds of occupations with a high degree of standardization be replaced by AI?

For the financial profession with a large number of standardization work, AI seems to be a natural fit. It can improve the quality of accounting information and work efficiency, make enterprise decision-making more scientific and effective, and already have the potential to be competent for some financial positions. For financial people, is AI a helper or an opponent?

Technological breakthroughs and policy promotion

Since the concept of "artificial intelligence" was first put forward at Dartmouth Conference in 1956, for more than half a century, the development of AI has experienced ups and downs, but it has never stopped moving forward, until the birth of ChatGPT, showing the great potential of General AI to empower many industries.

In China, the real bond between artificial intelligence and accounting, auditing and tax work occurred in 2015. This year, Deloitte first put forward the concept of financial robot RPA in the financial field, and then major manufacturers competed to enter the bureau and launched artificial intelligence software products one after another.

In November 2021, the Ministry of Finance issued the outline of the 14th five-year Plan for Accounting Reform and Development. It is proposed to strengthen the application of new generation information technology such as artificial intelligence in accounting basic work, management accounting practice, financial accounting work and the construction of unit financial accounting information system. In December of the same year, the Ministry of Finance issued the Accounting Informatization Development Plan (2021-2025), which clearly pointed out that it is supported by new technologies such as artificial intelligence to promote the digital transformation of accounting work and realize the expansion and upgrading of accounting functions. In March 2022, SASAC issued the guidance on speeding up the Construction of a World-class Financial Management system for Central Enterprises, proposing to take the initiative to use new technologies such as artificial intelligence to give full play to the advantages of finance as a natural data center. promote the transformation of financial management from informationization to digitalization and intelligence, and strive to become the forerunner, leader and promoter of the digital transformation of enterprises.

Artificial intelligence is an important means for enterprises to make digital transformation and break down profit barriers. It has the abilities of self-learning, independent decision-making, active interaction and context awareness, and creates rich high-level application scenarios. The financial department, a natural enterprise data center, can carry out data analysis and digital prediction based on transaction data, operating data and financial data, so as to provide a basis for business decision-making. Enhance the competitiveness of the market.

"AI+IT" accelerates the process of financial digitization

The advent of the financial robot (RPA) is regarded as a landmark event for the application of AI in the financial field. In 2017, Deloitte pioneered the introduction of financial robots, which are used in a large number of repetitive regularized financial operations. Nowadays, with the characteristics of "automatic execution", "tireless" and "unlimited expansion", RPA has become a digital employee "24 hours a day, 7 days a week" in more and more enterprises. Busy in fund receipt and payment, automatic tax declaration, automatic reconciliation, form audit, invoice processing, report automation, payroll accounting, expense reimbursement audit, voucher printing, property data transmission, intelligent data collection (OCR, voice input), master data maintenance and other jobs.

Also in 2017, Beijing first year Science and Technology Co., Ltd., which is deeply engaged in the field of management accounting and financial sharing, officially launched the "AI in ALL" strategy as the first software manufacturer in the industry to put forward intelligent finance, with the goal of enabling AI technology to deeply empower the fields of financial sharing, management accounting and data analysis within three to five years, comprehensively enhance the level of intelligent financial management in enterprises, and promote the transformation of financial digitization and overall digitization. In the first year, Science and Technology cooperated with iFLYTEK, a leading domestic artificial intelligence company, from project partner to strategic partner to the establishment of a joint venture company, and along the development route of jointly developing accounting robot, accounting robot and financial robot, it has created AI applications in many financial fields, such as voice interaction, invoice recognition and intelligent order examination.

In 2018, China's first intelligent financial research center was unveiled at the Shanghai National Institute of Accounting (upgraded to the Institute of Intelligent Finance in 2021). Founded by many enterprises, manufacturers and institutions in the United Nations of Shanghai National Accounting Institute, the research center is positioned as a platform for industry knowledge gathering, generation and sharing. In recent years, the center has carried out a lot of research around the combination of intelligent technology and finance, which has further promoted the application and innovation of "AI+IT" in the field of enterprise finance.

IFLYTEK divides artificial intelligence into three stages: computational intelligence, perceptual intelligence and cognitive intelligence, which enable machines to move from "saving and counting" to "listening and speaking, seeing and recognizing" and finally to "understanding and thinking". To achieve large-scale industrial application.

Finance is an important track for AI landing.

With the continuous breakthrough of technology, artificial intelligence technology based on financial robot RPA, expert system ES, artificial neural network ANN, natural language processing NLP, pattern recognition PR, etc., has been landed in accounting, financial report, budget management, cost management, tax management, fund management, strategic management, decision support, management report and so on.

The "billing robot" jointly developed by science and technology and iFLYTEK in the first year includes four robot assistants, namely, intelligent order filling robot, intelligent order receiving robot, intelligent single examination robot, and intelligent customer service robot, which can realize non-inductive reimbursement, automatic audit, intelligent examination and approval, automatic bookkeeping and automatic payment. It is not only a "fresh move" of a single scene and a single process, but also a "generalist" of multi-function integration.

Deepening and comprehensiveness is the inevitable trend of financial intelligence. perhaps in the near future, we can see an accounting robot that fully understands accounting standards and accounting systems. silently help enterprises to carry out automatic bookkeeping, deal with overall accounting, and assist medium financial personnel in the system. There is also an analytical robot with a better understanding of enterprise business and management science, which assists senior financial personnel in the planning, control, prediction and analysis of business operations, and gives advice to senior executives.

Develop an accounting ecosystem with man-machine symbiosis

From time to time, there are voices of AI replacing the financial profession. In 2022, the Harvard Business Review published an article predicting that 95 per cent of accountants would lose their jobs in the future, and "finance" was also included in a list of "occupations most likely to be replaced by AI".

Now there is ChatGPT, is it really "wolf" this time?

Liu Qin, dean of the Institute of Intelligent Finance of the Shanghai National Institute of Accounting, believes that artificial intelligence may soon replace the work of most financial personnel if only cost is given priority, but if financial personnel are given priority for their own survival, the development direction of intelligent finance should be to make us smarter, not to replace us (the 2nd Alumni Day keynote speech of Shanghai National Accounting Institute on November 24, 2018).

From the perspective of social value, Duan Dawei, Senior Vice President and CFO of iFLYTEK, pointed out that artificial intelligence technology can fundamentally change the traditional financial work scene and way. While improving work ability and efficiency, it liberates more valuable human resources to explore high-value areas, realizing the transformation from population dividend to talent dividend, and the financial professional work itself will take on a new look.

Li Tong, chief executive of science and technology in the first year, believes that compared with the personnel training costs of the state and enterprises for financial personnel, financial personnel with the blessing of artificial intelligence can engage in more complex work and create higher practical value for society.

"the future does not belong to artificial intelligence, but to new humans who have mastered artificial intelligence." The industry consensus on AI + finance is becoming increasingly clear-artificial intelligence will promote a new industrial division of labor in the industry and promote the upward development of the value creation system. As Liu Qin said, the machine or manual, this is not a zero-sum problem. Man-machine symbiosis is the golden key to solve the problem. Dialectically, some jobs are disappearing, while many new jobs are emerging, such as knowledge engineers, information modelers, RPA consultants, and so on.

To meet the intelligent financial era of man-machine symbiosis, we need to design the mechanism in advance and fully consider the organizational division of labor, process matching, information transmission, system connection, risk management and control, balance of interests, ethical security and other issues between people and AI. What we can do is not only to predict the future, but also to create the future.

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