PWC is the latest company to embrace artificial intelligence. The firm announced plans to invest $1billion in the technology to automate audit, tax, and consulting services for its US operations over the next 3 years.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, backed by Microsoft, will help one of the “big four” accounting companies to create generative AI, which can increase the efficiency of the company.
Professional service companies are looking for ways to use technology to perform basic tasks, such as creating first drafts of documents, by their employees.
Since November of last year, when chatGPT was released to the public, the potential of generative artificial intelligence has been a global phenomenon.
The bot can be trained to generate poetry, film scripts or code. It is trained using vast amounts of data from the Internet. OpenAI’s Dall:E is another example of generative AI. It can create images using text.
PWC is not the first to enter this field. The firm’s London office announced a strategic alliance with Harvey, an OpenAI-funded startup that creates AI tools and , the law firm, last month. It offers support to workers in the tax and legal service industries on contract analysis and regulatory compliance.
Harvey’s platform will be used to train and develop the company’s own AI models to create products and services that are tailored to its customers.
Laura Hinton, PWC UK’s Tax and Legal Leader, commented on the launch of Harvey: “There is an understandable interest in technologies built upon OpenAI and Chat GPT. We want to be on the cutting edge of technology, and use it strategically. “Integrating Harvey into our legal and tax work will help us differentiate our services for clients, and our staff are also excited about it.”
Many businesses are testing the capabilities of this new technology to speed up their processes. A fintech company has been experimenting with it as a translation tool, while a major retailer described using it in order to draft letters for customers.
Companies are hesitant to use confidential data for business purposes, despite the hype.
Martin Lee, at Cisco Talos’ cybersecurity division, said ChatGPT was a serious threat to privacy and information security.
He said: “AI, like an elephant, never forgets. Once information is ingested and new connections formed, it’s very difficult to remove the information and make the system ‘forget.’
AI algorithms can also lead to bias or discrimination.
The Bank of England closed its recent call for evidence regarding the use of AI within financial services. The discussion paper describing the challenges facing the City stated: “While AI can bring many benefits, it also poses novel challenges to firms and regulators, as well as amplifying existing risks for consumers, safety and soundness, market integrity, and financial stability.”