Best if you don’t if quality is more important than financial viability, but no one can compete financially with the flood of AI/LLM being given away for free or, at most, far below actual cost. It’s not good for anyone but the billionaires, but have you noticed how much wealth they have accumulated in the past few years? It’s very, very good for them.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important that ars has held this person accountable. They have a journalistic standard they are sticking to, which is that there should be no AI use, and there are repercussions for people who don’t abide. There’s not an extremely large cohort that is willing to spend more to avoid AI, but I am certainly part of it, and seeing ars hold this person accountable helps me know that I can trust and patronize them ethically. There are businesses out there unwilling to acquiesce to an AI first narrative, and I’m just worried that elements of doomerism are going to make people unwilling to believe those companies when they have every reason to believe them.
I don’t know but implication the other poster is making is “a human can write 2 articles, a Ai can write 5, I’m being asked for 5 which is impossible. I can use Ai and risk trusting it or not meet my required outputs and also get fired.”
I made up those numbers but that’s the accusation. You are damned if you use the Ai to meet your goals. You are damned if you don’t meet your goals.
My wife is an accountant. She went to a seminar today where they were told to start using AI or get out of the way. They were shown an AI that can produce consolidated annual accounts and financial statements in a few minutes, that it takes her and the auditors a month to produce. And they look very good! The company is unlikely to pay her and wait for the quality reports she has been producing for years. She’s on notice: start prompting the AI or move on. The AI promoters are going to run her and me and probably you into the ground and walk over us all, as they move on to their glorious future.
Ouch! Tell her I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for you too. All the accountants I worked with did alot more than just reports. Not to mention that sounds great until the Ai says 2+4 =2*4 and now the company owes 20 billion on taxes…
Plus in a lot of cases people don’t submit records in identical format, the number of excel workbooks I’ve seen where the data was on “sheet 2” for some unknown reason…
Maybe its just me, I always provided raw data on sheet 1, analyzed data on sheet 2, and if needed complicated formulas on sheet 3. I would be willing to bet their Ai would break on that format.
Her company has been good, though a recent restructuring is worrying. The advice came to an assembly of CFOs. The problem is much bigger than her company. This was the second professional development guidance she has received in the past month, promoting AI. I give her examples of unreliability and advise caution. At the session, they advised that no one should study programming or accounting any more. My advice was that they should study how to audit and that use of AI would make effective audit much harder than it has been, but also more necessary. The clusterfuck is going to affect everyone, unfortunately. You can’t avoid it by avoiding her company.
What was the damned if you don’t in this scenario? Seems more like damned if do, best if you don’t in this situation.
Best if you don’t if quality is more important than financial viability, but no one can compete financially with the flood of AI/LLM being given away for free or, at most, far below actual cost. It’s not good for anyone but the billionaires, but have you noticed how much wealth they have accumulated in the past few years? It’s very, very good for them.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important that ars has held this person accountable. They have a journalistic standard they are sticking to, which is that there should be no AI use, and there are repercussions for people who don’t abide. There’s not an extremely large cohort that is willing to spend more to avoid AI, but I am certainly part of it, and seeing ars hold this person accountable helps me know that I can trust and patronize them ethically. There are businesses out there unwilling to acquiesce to an AI first narrative, and I’m just worried that elements of doomerism are going to make people unwilling to believe those companies when they have every reason to believe them.
I don’t know but implication the other poster is making is “a human can write 2 articles, a Ai can write 5, I’m being asked for 5 which is impossible. I can use Ai and risk trusting it or not meet my required outputs and also get fired.”
I made up those numbers but that’s the accusation. You are damned if you use the Ai to meet your goals. You are damned if you don’t meet your goals.
My wife is an accountant. She went to a seminar today where they were told to start using AI or get out of the way. They were shown an AI that can produce consolidated annual accounts and financial statements in a few minutes, that it takes her and the auditors a month to produce. And they look very good! The company is unlikely to pay her and wait for the quality reports she has been producing for years. She’s on notice: start prompting the AI or move on. The AI promoters are going to run her and me and probably you into the ground and walk over us all, as they move on to their glorious future.
Did they actually check if the generated stuff was correct? I’m betting it isn’t
Nobody ever does. All AI demos are just: look at this mountain of generated text.
Extremely sorry to hear that is happening. For what it’s worth, reports like this are not uncommon now:
https://futurism.com/future-society/deloitte-government-ai-hallucinations
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/06/deloitte-to-pay-money-back-to-albanese-government-after-using-ai-in-440000-report
Ouch! Tell her I’m sorry, and I’m sorry for you too. All the accountants I worked with did alot more than just reports. Not to mention that sounds great until the Ai says 2+4 =2*4 and now the company owes 20 billion on taxes…
Plus in a lot of cases people don’t submit records in identical format, the number of excel workbooks I’ve seen where the data was on “sheet 2” for some unknown reason…
Maybe its just me, I always provided raw data on sheet 1, analyzed data on sheet 2, and if needed complicated formulas on sheet 3. I would be willing to bet their Ai would break on that format.
What company does she work for so I can stay clear of that impending hallucinatory clusterfuck?
Her company has been good, though a recent restructuring is worrying. The advice came to an assembly of CFOs. The problem is much bigger than her company. This was the second professional development guidance she has received in the past month, promoting AI. I give her examples of unreliability and advise caution. At the session, they advised that no one should study programming or accounting any more. My advice was that they should study how to audit and that use of AI would make effective audit much harder than it has been, but also more necessary. The clusterfuck is going to affect everyone, unfortunately. You can’t avoid it by avoiding her company.
LOL there’s no “glorious future”, they’re just going to rat fuck themselves, because those accounts are going to be riddled with errors.