[mierz00]

I disagree on this, there are plenty of problems in accounting that an LLM can help with.

I’ve built some software[0] that analyses general ledgers and uses LLMs to call out any compliance issues by looking at transaction and account descriptions.

Is it perfect, nope. But it’s a hell of a lot better than sifting through thousands of transactions manually which accountants do and get wrong all the time.

[0] - https://ledgeroptic.com

[krapp]

> But it’s a hell of a lot better than sifting through thousands of transactions manually which accountants do and get wrong all the time.

I still wonder why humans getting things wrong is a problem, but LLMs getting more things more wrong more often than humans never is. At the very least you'll need a human accountant around to verify the LLM. Or I guess you could just practice "vibe accountancy" and hope things work out but that seems like a worse idea than a trained human professional. But I'm probably just a Luddite.

Also, I am admittedly not an accountant, but I don't think they manually sift through every transaction to verify compliance issues in every single case. That probably isn't how that works.

[mierz00]

To be clear, I agree with you.

Our target market is accountants. I want to help them not replace them.

In the same way security audit tools aren’t replacing professionals, but that can help on initial scan.

[bluefirebrand]

> I still wonder why humans getting things wrong is a problem, but LLMs getting more things more wrong more often than humans never is

Some people hate humanity so much that they cannot wait to replace us all with AI so they never have to interact with another human ever again

That's honestly the only reason I can think that they are so biased toward AI

[mierz00]

I find this take so strange, do you find no value in AI?

I don’t even want AI to replace us, but it’s a great tool with many use cases.

[bluefirebrand]

I weigh the economic value against the lives I believe is going to ruin and the damage I believe is going to do to society and the future of the human race and I do not find value there. I find ruin

There might be a way for us to adopt AI as a tool without bringing ruin to many people, but I don't believe that is the goal of anyone building AI.

As it stands, I don't believe there is anything ethical about AI in it's current form. So from that perspective, I vehemently deny there is any value in it

At one point in history, people like you were asking why anyone could be anti-slavery. After all, it was impossible to deny the economic value of slaves.

[mierz00]

Why is AI unethical in its current form and what would make it ethical for you?

[AmbroseBierce]

At this point I don't think even Sam Altman believes AI to be ethical, as much as he would like to believe such thing.

[aristofun]

> I disagree on this

How can you disagree with the fact?

Some specific examples (like the one you mentioned, _adjacent_ to accounting per se) don't disprove the main point that 100% accuracy is fundamentally impossible with LLMs, while critical for all key accounting aspects.

[mierz00]

I think we misunderstand each other.

Accounting is quite broad and there are many examples of where LLMs can help.

For example, what is tax deductible is subjective to local laws. This is essentially a classification problem that LLMs are particularly good at.