AICPA launches Joseph, accounting-specific AI tool to address trust concerns

Welcome to Future Ready Live, where we help finance and accounting leaders prepare not just for change, but for transformation. I'm your host, Tom Hood. I'm the EVP of business growth and engagement at AICPA SEMA, the largest accounting and finance association in the world, representing 600,000 CPAs, CJMAs, and students. In our RISE 2040 initiative, we're asking a bold question. Who must we become in an age of AI? And we've been featuring thought leaders, authors, and leading edge areas of this exciting frontier. Today we're featuring a new tool and an interesting application in corporate finance. Welcome on the show will be Adam Hibbs, our VP of AI products, commercial virtual operation and licensing for AICPA SEMA. Say hello to everyone, Adam.

Hi everyone. Nice to meet you. and Kate Hearn. She's an FCMA, CGMA, and the senior director of IT portfolio management at PPL Corporation and a member of our future of finance leadership advisory group. Kate, say hello to our audience.

Hello. Hello everybody. Great to meet you all.

It's great to have you. So Kate was recently at our future finance summit in Denver where she ran into Adam Hibbs at our demo table for AI and accounting and they both are here to kind of share their perspectives and uh and some some exciting news from what she's been doing with this stuff. So with that Kate from where you sit as a finance practitioner what's the mood in the profession right now around AI?

Yeah thanks Tom. Um it's really quite mixed. Um you know I think the one important thing here is is that nobody can ignore it anymore. Um you know there is a lot of noise out there in terms of um people trying generic AI tools and have had mixed results. You know I think the big concern is trust in my role that you know I run something and it's like yeah I'm not sure I trust the data or it's validating as it should do. So I think that's where the real problem is is really about you want to be using all these tools. You want to be able to put the tools in the hands of the people that are in the business that you support. From my perspective, I've always been a bit cautious because I'm worried about what's going to come back through the Agentic AI tools because they don't necessarily understand accounting standards or FK accounting rules etc. So that's been my hesitation in terms of using Aentic AI to date.

And and Adam, from your perspective, obviously you're the one that helped develop this product that we're going to talk about. Um what's your what's your and you were at Future Finance on that. What's your perspective on all this? That's a really good point that you raised and one of the reasons we created Joseph was for that exact point of you need a tool that has specific information from a trusted source that is going to give you a very certain evidenceable response especially in a profession like accounting and finance where you need to make sure you've got the right point that is evidenced and for you given your experience around some of the day-to-day pain points with AI what are you experiencing where does the friction sit for you

yeah I think it varies in terms of what I'm hearing in the industry from my peers. You know, it it varies in terms of firm size. So, you know, if you think at a smaller firm, you might have people that are quite senior that have all the knowledge and you know, when they're stretched, everything slows down. But there with new staff, too. um you know so for example in my team we um we have a new finance team that we put in place in November and I actually rolled this tool out to them and they actually really enjoy using it and it's a real enabler within our team um it there's so much going on in terms of new standards or things being changed and upgraded and it's really helping my um my team get up to speed and get them to feel confident when they're being asked questions by their business leaders in terms of okay what can I capitalize what can I do and how can you help me? So I think it's really a bit of bit fragmented um but I that you know from my perspective um using um Josie has been a real game changer for us within our IT team.

So Adam let's tell the audience what Josie is and what's what's in it like that's because I think pretty exciting stuff. So Josie is a generative AI product that we created within the AICPA and what it actually has is a massive pres of authoritative guidance from within the AICPA's own library. And what it has is specific industry related guides. It has access to all the FASBY codifications as well. We're building in the Gazsby codifications too which will be live by this broadcast and we're also building in the PCA standard. So that's what's in it. But in terms of what it actually looks like, it's a conversational AI interface that looks similar to ones that you've probably played with out there like Chat GBT, Claude, and a range of others. But what it does that's different to a range of other tools out there and those is the curated data set that it has. As well as how it won't just say, okay, you've asked this question and here's a summarized response. It will then take you directly to the point that actually proves that. So you're not just comfortable in terms of the quality of the output. You can also cite it and evidence evidence it. That's where it originally was described as a research assistant or an AI research tool, but it can actually do a lot more than that. It's more of you're nearly limited by what you can think of using an LLM, a large language model for rather than just using it as research assistant.

And it's funny because when we created it, we thought it would be more uh useful for the firm CPA firms and practitioners in public accounting. And uh Kate is one that really opened our eyes to what how it can be really effective for finance and accounting and looking up especially all these changing standards and advice on new types of things that you have to deal with in the in the corporate finance function. Right Kate? So just give us a couple of those examples that you're you're experimenting with using the tool and why it's important.

Yeah. So from my perspective there's a lot of change going on. um you know accounting for software during development is a very key um standard that we use within our business and that was recently updated late last year. So I love the fact that Josie um makes it easy for me to go to somewhere where I can just get the most up-to-date information and I don't have to go trolling through lots of things and it gives me some really good insight in terms of where we're at. Um and you know I was asked a question um we're doing some work within our organization and you know I'm constantly being asked can I do this? Can I capitalize this? What can I do with this? And you know um having Josie there has really helped me um get to an answer quicker than I would normally be able to get to. Um and actually when the information comes out of um Josie, it's um it's really um I find it quite comprehensive and very you know consistent and it it actually speaks in layman terms. So I don't have to do any changing of any words or any terminology. I can actually just share it with the senior leaders that are asking the questions and um and you know we can then um speak with our um accounting team as well to say okay this is what um the guidance is um you know what's your thoughts in terms of you know can we adopt this new um standard or can we do things slightly differently and more often than not um to our credit within our organization you know we push up on our standards and um you know we actually feed into updating some some of the accounting standards that relate to our organization. So, um we're pretty much involved in that. So, um it's it's good to have Josie there to help um provide support to people within my team when they get asked questions by senior leaders for them to be able to be able to digest what that standard is saying and then obviously back to their senior leaders within the organization.

Yeah. So, and then how do you think about this versus chat GBT say? I mean, I know you you've probably used other tools before to do some of that research. What what do you think the difference or benefit is around that?

So, I use chat GPT2 and I use chat GP2 GPT in um helping me to consolidate my um commentary and insights during my month end. So, you know, it saves me having to troll through all my cost centers and see where my what's going on in terms of where my variances are and, you know, we have a we have a quite a good query that basically runs and, you know, gives us our insights are for the month, which is awesome. Of course, we check it, right? We've always been we had it drilled into us, you know, at the future of finance conferences. Um, you know, when we our summit chat GPT is great, but you need to validate, validate, validate. you can't just take it as being read and the fact that you know this is what it should be but it saves us time at month end in terms of providing that insight and providing that story. So um we have been using chat GPT um but obviously this is different this is more around making sure that you're doing the right thing and you're following the code of conduct and you're actually managing your accounting standards and that you're doing and and and doing that. So you need I think in in a lot of cases one to actually make sure being there as an advisor and a trusted advisor to your senior leaders enable and being able to give them some guidance in to manage their business and make effective business decisions. But then also with the chap GPT it's really at the back end in terms of when you're reviewing your performance in terms of okay how you know do and how do you how can you summarize that more effectively um we are also doing aici um don't whether you want to know this or Tom but from an from an aentic AI perspective goi