The Terminator in the Kitchen: How Robots are Changing the World of Fast Food

As we continue to digest the impact of ChatGPT on the world of work, CNBC had an interesting video on how robots are ready to replace humans in the kitchen:

As noted in the report, the industry is poised to save $12 billion in labour costs by replacing "up to 82% of restaurant positions... by robots." The video also highlights the safety benefits that could accrue to fast-food workers with the use of robots. Coincidentally, I was chatting last week with a barista at Starbucks. He mentioned an unfortunate incident where his friend fell into an oil vat while cleaning the equipment. This was not at a small restaurant, but a major one. Finally, the video speaks to the labour crunch that the industry is facing. With over half a million positions to be filled, robots could be the answer restauranteurs are looking for. 

Other advantages include the following:

• Improved hygiene: Given the impact of COVID-19, many people now view the idea of reducing human involvement in food preparation as a way to ensure a more hygienic end product.
• Consistency: By using robots for food preparation, restaurants can ensure that customers receive consistently high-quality food. This can avoid dissatisfied customers, who have had to consume burnt offerings!
• Reduced food wastage: Systems can be designed to avoid food wastage and capture excess toppings, etc., to be reused. 

In terms of cost, Miso rents these out:

"Miso’s flashiest invention is Flippy, a robot that can be programmed to flip burgers or make chicken wings and can be rented for roughly $3,000 a month."

What I found fascinating was how we have been preconditioned by sci-fi movies to expect humanoid robots. Instead, we find an awfully familiar-looking contraption: a rail-car system with a camera and mechanical arm attached. It's pretty similar to what we have seen before in terms of how robots are being used to make lattes, as discussed in this post. 

But there is more to the contraption than ‘meets the eye’. The value ultimately is in the software that can bring all the moving parts together. As noted by Mike Bell, CEO of Miso Systems, who manufactures the "frying robot" (taken from the YouTube transcript): 

"The hard thing to get right about this product is having the computer vision, the algorithms that plan the cook cycle and the software that manages the robotic motion to all work together so that it's as reliable as a refrigerator and it does the job."

In conclusion, the food industry is looking to save billions of dollars in labour costs by replacing restaurant workers with robots. Though this would save mountains of money we need to look at the society wide impact of such a monumental shift. Personally, working in the fast food industry as a young person taught me a lot before entering the CPA profession, such as the importance of hard work, humility, and empathy. Without such work, where would the youth of today or tomorrow learn such basics? Only time will tell what this means for the future generations that don't have access to such formative experiences.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else

AI and the CPA: OpenAI's ChatGPT will Blow Your Mind! Try it Now!

We previously discussed OpenAI in this post. In that post, I closed with this comment:

"We should be aware of the concept of exponential change. Technology, like AI, improves at an exponential rate and not a linear rate. Consequently, monitoring the space is key for CPAs and other to ensure that they see change coming and adapt accordingly."

And so, my fellow CPAs, you need to check out how much AI has advance in the two years since that post. It's absolutely amazing to see how advanced the technology is and how quickly it has come:

YouTube is one thing. But testing it out is another. To be honest, I was about to review the video and then summarize it. Then I thought, why not ask ChatGPT? 

Question to ChatGPT: "What are 5 key takeaways for CPAs with respect to ChatGPT?"

Answer: 

1. ChatGPT is a large language model trained by OpenAI.
2. ChatGPT has a knowledge cutoff of 2021, and it does not have access to the internet or current events.
3. ChatGPT is able to generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions, but it is important to keep in mind that it is a machine and may not always provide accurate or complete information.
4. ChatGPT is not a substitute for professional advice or guidance, and it should not be used as the sole basis for making important decisions.
5. ChatGPT is intended for general informational purposes only, and it is not a substitute for professional judgment or expertise. It is important for CPAs to consult with appropriate sources and to exercise their professional judgment when making decisions.

Reading through the takeaways, it seems like it added an extra dash of risk management. Could it have accounted for our risk-aversion?

Then I thought, why not ask it directly about the video itself? 

Question to ChatGPT: "What are 5 key takeaways from It’s Time to Pay Attention to A.I. (ChatGPT and Beyond)"

Answer:

1. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing field with the potential to significantly impact many aspects of society, including the accounting profession.
2. AI technologies, such as chatbots and language models like ChatGPT, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and can be used for a wide range of applications.
3. It is important for CPAs to stay informed about the latest developments in AI and to consider how these technologies may impact their profession and their clients.
4. While AI has the potential to improve efficiency and accuracy, it is important to carefully consider the risks and limitations of these technologies, including the potential for errors or biases.
5. CPAs should consider ways to incorporate AI into their practices, such as by using AI tools to automate certain tasks or by providing guidance to clients on the use of AI. However, they should also ensure that they have the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively use and understand these technologies.

Notice how I did not have to tailor this questions for CPAs? ChatGPT automatically brought the context over from the previous question.  (As for how good this summary is, you can judge for yourself.)

Then, I decided to ask it about how exponential technologies will impact the CPA profession. 

First question, "Will blockchain replace the need for financial auditors?"

Answer:

"Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of the financial industry, including auditing. However, it is unlikely that blockchain will completely replace the need for financial auditors.

One of the main features of blockchain is its ability to provide a tamper-evident record of transactions. This can be beneficial for auditing purposes, as it allows auditors to more easily verify the accuracy and completeness of financial records. However, auditors still need to be able to interpret and analyze the data contained in these records, and to ensure that the data is consistent with other information and documentation.

Additionally, while blockchain can provide a secure and reliable record of transactions, it is not a substitute for the expertise and judgment of trained financial professionals. Auditors bring a deep understanding of financial principles and practices, as well as the ability to identify and assess risks and potential areas of concern.

Overall, it is likely that blockchain will augment and enhance the role of financial auditors, rather than replacing them entirely."

Notice the nuanced response? It should have spoke to validity, instead of completeness when it came to how the blockchain will assist the auditor. However, it didn't just list all the audit objectives just "to be safe". 

Then I asked about artificial intelligence:

Question: "How can AI be used to automate financial auditing?"

Answer:

"Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to automate certain aspects of financial auditing, such as the analysis and interpretation of financial data. This can potentially improve the efficiency and accuracy of the audit process.

For example, AI algorithms can be trained to analyze large amounts of financial data and identify patterns and trends that may not be immediately apparent to human auditors. This can help auditors to more quickly and effectively identify areas of potential risk or concern.

AI can also be used to automate the testing of transactions and the evaluation of internal controls. For example, an AI system could be trained to perform automated tests on transactions to ensure that they are recorded correctly in the financial records. This can help to reduce the time and resources needed to perform these tasks manually.

Overall, the use of AI in financial auditing can help to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the audit process, while also freeing up auditors to focus on more complex and higher-level tasks that require human judgment and expertise."

Recognize the theme of "race with the machine" in both this response and the previous blockchain response? This is especially integrated into the last paragraph, which speaks to what AI can do versus what "human judgment and expertise" can do. Also, notice how it explains AI role in both risk assessment and testing of internal controls. That is, it had enough where "understanding" to breakdown the response into different aspects of the audit. 

When looking at this, we need to ask ourselves: is this inflection point for exponential rise of AI? 

Do review the last part of the video, where Samuel H. Altman, CEO of OpenAI, explains how he anticipates the impact of such technology on the legal profession. (The video earlier takes about how Josh Browder's Do Not Pay, will leverage the tech. I had previously seen Browder on a panel in 2016; see this post for the video). 

It's not quite a stretch to apply what he says to the CPA profession. There are key differences; in that we opine on financial statements, provide tax advice based on financial data, and the like. However, audit data analytics tech has been around for decades. It's just a matter of getting the different parts to talk to each other. 

Clearly, it's early days for ChatGPT and many issues need to be sorted out. For example, it has already earned the moniker "CheatGPT" for how it can be potentially used as a short-cut by students. That being said, it's clearly the biggest watershed moment for AI and the white-collar workforce, since IBM's Watson defeated Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. 

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else

Figuring out FTX and SBF (Part 1): The Epic Rise in 5 videos

The recent weeks have seen the fall of crypto-king Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF). The epic rise and the spectacular fall of him and his FTX empire has us all asking one question: what happened?

We’ll initially explore this saga over several posts. 

 

In this post, we look at 5 videos that cover the rise of SBF and his FTX crypto-exchange. We’ll start by looking at how he initially got rich through arbitrage trading, look at the FTX “business model”, his connections to the US government, and then close with the celebrity endorsements that helped propel him to stardom.

 

Video #1: The Benevolent Billionaire?

Probably my first encounter with SBF, was in his interview with Nas Daily. We learn how SBF rose to fame in the crypto space by taking advantage of price differences in bitcoin in the US and in Japan. More importantly, the video captures the hope and the hype around the “earn to give” concept that SBF promoted. Turns out it was all hype and no hope. Vox published their twitter DMs with SBF, where he explains “I feel bad for those who get f***** by it…this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths [sic] and so everyone likes us” (link).

 

 

Video #2: Did SBF really say that Crypto is a Ponzi Scheme – 7 months ago?

On Bloomberg’s Odd Lot’s podcast aired back in April 2022, SBF seems to admit to Wall Street’s Wiseman Matt Levine that “magic internet money” is a Ponzi scheme. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole podcast, check out Coffeezilla’s quick takes. The technique that SBF discusses appears to  have been used in Celsius, which we discussed previously.  

 

 

Video #3: There are magic boxes, but magic business models?

On a separate but related note, FTX offered high rates of interests to depositors. As shown in Wall Street Millennial’s video, the rates were much higher than the fed rate that was close to zero at the time. This is not so much about the magic money box that SBF referred to in the previous video, but rather pure magic. How else can we explain the sustainability of such a high interest rate on bitcoin/Ethereum deposits? As CPAs know, when expenses exceed revenues – a business failure is inevitable.  (Click here to go to the timestamp where they discuss the issue of interest rate deposits)

 

Video #4: If you’re for regulations, you’re one of the good guys – right?

Stepping back, Cold Fusion’s video gives a good broad understanding of the key events that happened with the rise and sudden fall of FTX. (The previous video is also quite good as well). That being said, this video takes time to highlight SBF’s connection with the government and regulatory bodies.

 

Firstly, his mom is connected to the Democratic party. Secondly, he testified before congress, donated to both parties (not just the Democrats), and met with Gary Gensler from the SEC. If you look carefully at the screen shot where he speaks about the meeting with Gensler, you may recognize IEX’s Brad Katsuyama. (Reuters reported here on this meeting). He’s the protagonist of Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys. And that’s not the only connection to Lewis. Reports have emerged that Lewis had spent 6 months with SBF and is planning to publish a book about him. Lastly, there is an odd connection between FTX’s CEO, Caroline Ellison, and Gary Gensler. As Cold Fusion points out, Caroline’s father, Glenn Ellison, was Gensler’s boss at MIT.

 

Video #5: Is FTX a smart bet, with all these celeb endorsements?

Both Wall Street Millennial and Cold Fusion pointed out the role of influencers played in pumping the FTX/SBF brand name. But we don’t just need to take their word for it. We can see it for ourselves. Some of the promo videos are still live on FTX’s YouTube Channel. This video features Canada’s own Kevin O’Leary:

If you didn’t have a chance to go through the whole video, check out this part where he and the host emphasize the compliance-orientation of SBF and FTX. Now, that definitely didn’t age well. But perhaps what’s more surprising is O’Leary’s comments post-FTX meltdown. Apparently, he would back SBF in another crypto-venture (link).

 

Lastly, if you are interested in seeing the actual adverts aired on TV, check out this one featuring the actor Larry David.

 

In our next post, we’ll look at some more videos that take a closer look at the “Ten Days in November” that broke FTX and could have possibly ushered in the “Crypto Ice Age”.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else.

 

NFTs: Heading for the Trough of Disillusionment?

The recent sale of NFTs from Yuga Labs showed both the promise and the peril of the hyped technology. On the one hand, Yuga Labs made “$320 million in what was considered the “largest NFT mint in history”, with its “sale of Otherdeed nonfungible tokens that represent digital land deeds on their new venture, the Otherside metaverse”.

 

Minting is the NFT equivalent of an “initial public offering” (IPO). But instead of selling stock, they are selling a digital token. In this case it was land rights in “a metaverse game world”. Each parcel of “digital land” was sold for “305 ApeCoin (APE), or nearly $5,800”. The incentive for the buyer is to get in early and then sell the NFT on secondary markets. For example, on OpenSea (a major reseller of NFTs) the Otherdeeds were selling for an average of just over 9 ether (ETH) or nearly $27,000.  

 

The peril?

 

The rush to cash in on this craze resulted in overloading the Ethereum blockchain. And that didn’t just result in slow service. It cost millions: $123 million. Users got hit with transaction costs that exceeded the cost of the “digital land deed”, coming in between “2.6 ETH ($6,500) to 5 ETH ($14,000)”.

 

In contrast, Visa charges merchants between “2.87 percent and 4.35 percent per transaction”, which would have been about $160-$260 per sale. It’s hard to see how the decentralized finance (DeFi) approach is superior to the “classic” approach of centralized finance (CeFi).

 

So, should we discard NFTs?

 

NFTs: What took them to the Peak of Inflated Expectations?

Before running for the hills and closing the books on NFTs, we should remember the Dotcom era. It was the late 1990s, Google was still a scrappy start-up and Microsoft was seen as the bully those days. And people will all starry eyed about the “new Internet economy’. Slap a “.com” behind your company’s name and voila! Millions of dollars of investment would be thrown at you.

 

So, is history repeating itself? In a sense, yes.

 

According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, there is an initial hype phase when the innovation causes mania in the markets, which is known as the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”. That is, the innovation is seen as that silver bullet that will cure all.

 

Conceptually, NFTs provide a means to create “digital scarcity”, hence the term “non-fungible”. Specifically:

“NFTs allow ownership and use rights to be demonstrated for any piece of digital content by assigning the content a specific, nonduplicable identifier that is recorded on a distributed database, or blockchain, typically Flow or Ethereum.” (link)

 

This then allows physical collectible items – basketball cards, comic books, art, and so on – to be unique digital items. Previously, this was not possible as all digital “assets” were fungible, i.e. copies of copies with no way to distinguish one from another.

 

A secondary area of value within NFTs is the use of algorithms to generate art.  Specifically, algorithms are used to synthesize “different design features, accessories, and special traits… [to create] thousands of unique combinations.” In other words, an artist does not have to generate each work of art. Instead, they can “draw” one piece and then let the algorithm generate thousands of images based on that initial design. For example, the “Ape images” generated as part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club “collection” relied on this “procedural algorithms that can create tiers of rarity and value”.

 

Beyond art, sports media looks to be a potentially lucrative NFT market. Deloitte Global predicts between 4 to 5 million gifts/purchases for such digital work that “will generate more than US$2 billion in transactions in 2022”.   

 

Entering the Trough of Disillusionment: 10 Challenges with NFTs

The value of NFTs is intuitive at first glance. But there are challenges. The emergence of these problems, issues, and outright scams is a sign that we are heading into the next phase of Gartner’s Hype Cycle which is “the Trough of Disillusionment”. If this was the early days of the Internet, it would be the moment when investors realized that pets.com was not such a good idea after all. It’s in this phase that the problems with the innovation become apparent. Let’s look at 10 issues that have arisen with NFTs.

 

Issue #1: Blockchain does not scale like the Cloud

The +$100 million gas bill that Ethereum effectively issued to “digital land deed” speculators was not a first. This problem was previously experienced with CryptoKitties. As noted in this paper, “CryptoKitties was the first widely recognized blockchain game. Players could own, breed, and trade kitties, which are the only prop in the game.” The paper explains how collectors experienced massive gas bills from Ethereum to get in on the hype:

“The cost of performing operations on a public blockchain system is highly volatile due to the unstable price of cryptocurrencies, resulting in it difficult to control the cost of the applications deployed on the blockchain. As CryptoKitties was deployed on Ethereum, the cost of playing the game (including the costs of buying, breeding, and renting kitties, as well as the fees paid to Ethereum miners) has risen significantly due to the rapid rise of Ether price in the third stage. Ether price increased from US $451 on December 10, 2017, to US $1,322 on January 10, 2018…resulting in a significant increase in the cost of playing the game, raising the bars for new players entering the game.” [Emphasis added]

 

We’ve been conditioned by the cloud to expect automatic scaling; such bottlenecks seem to harken back to a more primitive era of computing. However, that’s the price of trust. The proof-of-work consensus mechanism is designed precisely to slow things down to allow for the miners to verify the transactions and prevent hackers from committing non-authorized records to the blockchain.

 

Issue #2: NFTs do not necessarily convey digital ownership

According to Deloitte Global: “Ownership of an NFT may include ownership of the underlying digital asset, though most sports NFTs sold to date have no ownership or use rights in the underlying media.” [Emphasis added, italics from original]

 

But perhaps a bigger smoking gun is at Christie’s auction house – the same one that sold Beeple’s digital artwork for $69 million. As highlighted by the well-known nocoiner, David Gerard: “Christie’s auction of an NFT is a fabulous worked example. There’s a 33-page terms and conditions document, and if you wade through the circuitous verbiage, it finally admits that … you’re just buying the crypto-token itself…”

 

He goes on to cite the terms of sale, right from the Christie’s site, which clearly states:

“You acknowledge that ownership of an NFT carries no rights, express or implied, other than property rights for the lot (specifically, digital artwork tokenized by the NFT)…”

 

Issue #3: If all that’s transferred is a hash, then where’s my “digital asset”?

The “what” is not the only issue. The ”where” is also an issue. As noted on CoinDesk: “On the simplest level, an NFT is a record (a document with a hash) stored on Ethereum (usually) that points to where its associated content (the image) lives somewhere else on the internet (it's much too expensive to store images on Ethereum).” [Emphasis added]

 

Like scalability, we are accustomed to the idea that storage is cheap and plentiful. But such assumptions don’t hold for the blockchain. Therefore, this disconnect between the location of the ownership record and the digital item itself can be baffling. Moreover, this approach contradicts that generally accepted wisdom that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’.

 

Issue #4: Is digital art a great vehicle for money laundering?

As noted by the US Department of the Treasury: “…the emerging digital art market, such as the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), may present new risks, depending on the structure and market incentives.”

 

Though specifics were not provided, it’s not surprising the that the US government has their eye on the area. Given the reputation that Bitcoin has for us in less than legal transactions, it’s not surprising that NFTs potential for nefarious purposes.

 

 

Issue #5: NFT Price Volatility is an Understatement

One of the more famous NFTs was Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, which was sold for $2.9 million. According to the Guardian, Sina Estavi, a crypto entrepreneur, who bought the tweet wanted a cool $48 million for it. What was he offered? According to CBS, only $280.

 

Issue #6: You could be buying an NFT that has been copied without the author’s permission

OpenSea noted in a tweet that “Over 80% of the items created with this tool were plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam.” Perhaps, the worst incident of this was how fraudsters sold the work of a dead artist. Moreover, “NFTs themselves can be used to fraudulently attribute digital designs to multiple owners”.

 

Issue #7: The superstar NFT artists make all the money, the rest of us don’t

The hype would make us believe that we all can get rich from NFTs. A study published on Nature found that 75% of NFTs sold for a price less than $15:

“We observe that the average sale price of NFTs is lower than 15 dollars for 75% of the assets, and larger than 1594 dollars, for 1% of the assets. Considering individual categories, NFTs categorized as Art, Metaverse, and Utility reached higher prices compared to other categories, with the top 1% of assets having average sale price higher than 6290, 9485, and 12,756 dollars respectively.”

 

Issue #8: For all the promise of blockchain’s transparency, opaqueness abounds

As noted earlier, digital artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) sold his "Everydays - The First 5000 Days" for $69 million. But the buyer was a mystery. But nocoiner Amy Castor had a hunch. She thought it was MetaKovan (Vignesh Sundaresan). And this was confirmed on CNBC.

 

But so what? It turns out that MetaKovan and Beeple were already business partners.

 

Beeple owns 2% of the B20 tokens that is behind Metapurse “a crypto-based investment firm”. Metapurse is controlled by MetaKovan. That firm had previously purchased “Beeple’s “Everydays: 20 Collection” artworks for $2.2 million”. (See Castor’s post here). Though the "Everydays - The First 5000 Days” is owned by MetaKovan and not Metapurse, the previous relationship does dampen the hype behind the sale and calls to us to question the valuation.

 

But a more important question, is why wasn’t this visible on the Ethereum blockchain? According to Castor:“…it sounds like the funds may even have gone into Christie’s escrow wallet…Anyhow, if both parties had Coinbase accounts, the exchange could just change the database records off-chain to flip account balances. In this way, Coinbase acts like a second layer, and you wouldn’t see the ETH transaction.” [Emphasis added]

 

Issue 9: NFTs still rely on “classic” intermediaries for mega sales

NFTs that sell the best still rely on “old-world” forms of intermediaries. That is, NFTs are not a way for the “common person” to make it rich simply because of their artistic talent. Instead, the more successful NFTs rely on the following:

·        Celebrity endorsements: Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, Eminem, and others used their celebrity status to give a boost to the NFT “Ape Art” from the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

·        Whitelisting: Bloomberg reported on Chainanalysis’s finding that “[t]he practice of whitelisting appears to be similar to the preferential treatment of some insiders and investors that has long been practiced in the cryptocurrency world, especially with so-called initial coin offerings before the sales were shut down by regulators”. Citing the Chainanalysis study, Bloomberg also noted that “[u]sers who make the whitelist and later sell their newly-minted NFT gain a profit 75.7% of the time, versus just 20.8% for users who do so without being whitelisted”

·        Official Auction Houses: Beeple did not sell his $69 million piece of digital art on some random site on the Internet. He sold it at Christie’s. Christie’s has been around since 1766. It doesn’t get more classic than that.

 

Issue 10: NFTs are rife with information security issues

Speaking as a CPA/CISA, one of the craziest aspects of NFTs is that the process requires you to grant the entity issuing NFT (or the minter) logical access to your wallet. And what happens if you grant access to the wrong individual, i.e. a hacker? All that crypto will be emptied out.

 

The other scam that is out there is that people can “airdrop” an NFT into your wallet. And if you click on that? As RAC explained to Rolling Stone, “[e]verything’s programable, so what they do is they make these tokens unsellable. It basically locks you into something and forces you to give them access to your funds, and then they steal your money.”

 

What RAC is referring to is the programmability that’s baked into the Ethereum blockchain. Consequently, clicking something (even deleting something) could initiate malware that would result in your digital wallet being drained of funds.

 

Closing thoughts:

 

So with all these problems, what does the future look like?

 

It’s really about governance. The unregulated nature of stocks in the 1920s ultimately led to the Great Depression, which brought the Security Exchange Commission into existence and the need for financial audits. Similarly, governance will ultimately need to be implemented to enable true ownership of not just the hash in the NFT but the underlying asset. That is, just like you own a painting, you should have the underlying code that is the actual digital art.

 

In terms of AML, Know Your Customer (KYC) controls are percolating at NFT marketplaces. Wired reported that:

 

“A Twinci spokesperson says the platform is implementing something like this at the moment – it is verifying artists to make them stand out from ordinary users. Green-ticked artists have verified their identity in a process similar to how Twitter doles out its blue ticks. People are asked to give their name, a photo of themselves, proof of them creating an artwork as well as a digital portfolio. Twinci cautions its community to re-consider collecting NFTs from non-verified artists.”

 

But doesn’t this contradict the decentralization that blockchain is supposed to bring?

 

The challenge with this idea is largely based on the myth of individualism. Society is not simply composed of individuals. Rather, it’s the institutions and collectively shared norms that hold society together. For example, if Canadians did not collectively respect private property then anything you held could be stolen without recourse. But perhaps the greatest illustration of such conventions goes back to how disputes were handled on the blockchain itself. Consider the DAO hack of 2016. The consensus amongst the Ethereum community felt and injustice was done because of the theft of ether (the cryptocurrency used on Ethereum). So they turned to Ethereum’s leader/inventor, Vitalik Buterin, to mutate the immutable. This is why the term “immutable” shouldn’t really be used; tamper-resistant is more accurate.

 

Consequently, once such myths give way to practical necessities of governance (e.g. SEC-type organizations managing minting, courts opining on digital ownership, ISO standards, etc.); we will be on our way from the current wild west to something safe and stable. Again, this is history repeating itself. The cloud took time for standards to take hold. For example, cloud service providers see the SOC2 audit report on the IT controls as a standard. But it wasn’t always. In the early days of cloud, it was rumored that Eli Lily had to walk away from Amazon because they could not offer the IT controls that they needed (which Amazon denied). Regardless, the security norms took a while to become the status quo. Similarly, this standardization is part of the process to take the NFTs from the Trough of Disillusionment to the Slope of Enlightenment. This is the next phase of Gartner’s Hype Cycle. Only time will tell how players within the industry will coalesce around such standards given that the NFT/blockchain evangelists are still stuck with the idea that society is unnecessary.

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else

 

AI and the CPA: What should CPAs know about GPT3?

In the epic battle between man versus machine, the chess champion Gary Kasparov threw the match because it is alleged that he thought that the AI-powered system did a well-calculated move. In reality, it was just a random move that the system threw out because it had experienced a technical glitch.

One up-and-coming AI-enabled service to watch is GPT-3 from an organization called OpenAI. OpenAI was started by Elon Musk. It’s in beta right now and in a really raw state but the capabilities that have surfaced are pretty amazing. 

One capability (as noted in the video) it has is summarizing long reads. However, there are serious flaws that need to be worked out. For example, it advised a fake patient suffering from depression to kill themselves. So it's not going to be rolled out at a hospital any time soon, but it is something definitely watch.

AI and CPAs: Competitors or Collaborators?

AI could make the profession more sustainable, as these mundane tasks could be handed to a system. MIT’s Eric Brynjolfsson describes this concept as "race with the machine". The idea is that doctors, accountants, lawyers, can work better together with technology. It’s almost like a second set of eyes or someone that can help you assess whether the professional judgement on an issue is correct.

However, this is not something that is currently on the horizon. 

What’s more realistic is understanding where the economics of automation will apply for more basic things like have a more timely close. McKinsey put out a study in August 2020 that found automating and increasing the accuracy of forecasts helped management make better decisions. One case study they highlighted was a manufacturer that was able to reduce inventories and product obsolescence by 20 to 40 percent. 

Change is coming faster than we expect

We should be aware of the concept of exponential change.  Technology, like AI, improves at an exponential rate and not a linear rate. Consequently, monitoring the space is key for CPAs and other to ensure that they see change coming and adapt accordingly. 

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else

Audit, Audit, Audit harked Mark: Can CPAs come to Facebook's rescue?

In an investigation by the Guardian and the New York Times, the alleged misdeeds of Cambridge Analytica were revealed.

As noted in the Guardian article:

"Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”... Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals."

The following video from TheVerge sums up the issue:

Although such allegations have received attention (in my opinion due to the association with Trump's campaign), the reality is that these allegations against Facebook are actually not new and reported in both the Intercept in early 2017 and the Guardian way back in 2015. 

There was an ensuing backlash (as noted in the video above and here) that forced Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg to respond. He both had a written response and gave the following interview on CNN:

During the CNN interview, he mentioned the word "audit" 3 times[emphasis added]:

• "So we're going to go now and investigate every app that has access to a large amount of information from before we locked down our platform. And if we detect any suspicious activity, we're going to do a full forensic audit"
• "And we're now not just going to take people's word for it when they give us a legal certification, but if we see anything suspicious, which I think there probably were signs in this case that we could have looked into, we're going to do a full forensic audit."
• "We know how much -- how many people were using those services, and we can look at the patterns of their data requests. And based on that, we think we'll have a pretty clear sense of whether anyone was doing anything abnormal, and we'll be able to do a full audit of anyone who is questionable."

Can CPAs come to Mark's rescue? 

Zuckerberg's repetitive use of the word audit should be read in conjunction with his "welcoming" of regulation:

"I actually am not sure we shouldn't be regulated. You know, I think in general, technology is an increasingly important trend in the world, and I actually think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than yes or no, should it be regulated?"

Zuckerberg would not be the first tech giant to opt for regulation as a business strategy.

In Tim Wu's Master Switch, Theodore Veil also advocated for the concept of a regulated monopoly in the arena of telephones:

"[Theodore] Vail died in 1920 at age 74, shortly after resigning as AT&T's president, but by that time, his life's work was done. The Bell system had uncontested domination of American telephony, and long-distance communication was unified according to his vision. The idea of an open, competitive system had lost out to AT&T's conception of an enlightened, licensed, and regulated monopoly. AT&T would remain in this form until the 1980s, and it would return in not so substantially different form in the 2000s. As historian Milton Mueller writes, Vail had completed the "political and ideological victory of the regulated monopoly paradigm, advanced under the banner of universal service."" [emphasis added]

As Tim points out in his book, the move enabled AT&T didn't always use their monopolistic powers for good. They charged high long distance rates and even stifled innovation suppressing the answering machine due to potential conflict with its main business.

Regardless, it shows that Facebook could be an early advocate for CPAs offering privacy related assurance services around its algorithms.

AlgoTrust: A new service offering for CPAs? 

The concept of AlgoTrust is something I have previously discussed in this post.

The idea actually has support from multiple angles not least of which of comes from information security expert, Bruce Schneier:

"...it is also worth noting that there are other experts who hold that algorithms - from a privacy perspective - need to be regulated. Bruce Schneier, a well-known information security expert who helped review the Snowden documents, in his latest book, Data and Goliath ... also calls for "auditing algorithms for fairness". He also notes that such audits don't need to make the algorithms public, which is it the same way financial statements of public companies are audited today. This keeps a balance between confidentiality and public confidence in the company's use of our data."

Big Data versus Privacy: The monetization paradox
Such an algo-audit could leverage the work done by AICPA and CPA Canada in the realm of privacy, specifically the Generally Accepted Privacy Principles. That being said, privacy audits have been a hard sell in the past. But what distinguishes the service here is that it would be auditing the algorithm for compliance with privacy "regulations".The reason regulations need to be put in quotes is that in substance privacy legislation is effectively eliminated if the consumer consents to use the service.  

The challenge, therefore, is balancing the drive to monetize big data with the privacy needs of the people who use the service. For example, people who identify with the "left" may not want Steve Bannon or Trump accessing their data. Similarly, people who identify with the "right" may not want Obama accessing their social media data. The end result is that no one can access meaningful data due to privacy restrictions - resulting in a standard so restrictive that it eliminates that ability of companies like Facebook to monetize the treasure trove of data that they have collected.

As noted in an earlier post, there is an inherent highlight the conflict between privacy and profiting from big data. The value of big data emerges from the secondary uses of big data. However, privacy policies require the user to consent to a specific use of data at the time they sign up for the service. This means future big data analytics are essentially limited by what uses the user agreed upon sign-up. However, corporations in their drive to maximize profits will ultimately make privacy policies so loose (i.e. to cover secondary uses) that the user essentially has to give up all their privacy in order to use the service.

There is a lot of potential in attempting to create an assurance service to address Facebook's predicament, but as they say, the devil is in the details. 

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else

CATS2016: Exponential Tech & the CPA

Today, I presented at the Canadian Accounting Technology Show and discussed how exponential technologies and their potential impact on the profession.

During the presentation, I promised a blogpost for the attendees who wanted to dig deeper in the presentation. So here it is!

IBM Watson's Victory over Ken Jennings
During the talk I refer to Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter's defeat at the hands of IBM's Watson. (See Engadet's video for more on this "exponential event".)
This post gives some background on the new "space race" between the tech-giants for the killer AI app and also gives a link to Ken's talk.

For additional information on Watson and the medical profession check out this video.

Exponential versus Linear Technological Change
Kodak - who invented the digital camera in 1975 - was ultimately disrupted by that very same technology. In fact, one of their employees applied Moore's Law to pixel's per dollar in digital cameras.

Why?

The problem illustrate that Kodak (as well as Polaroid) had linear thinking and didn't realize how quick digital technology would become the norm and preferred way of consuming photography. In this post, Peter Diamandis talks about how 30 exponential steps contrasts to 30 exponential steps (and talks more broadly about linear vs exponential thinking) and Ray Kurzweil talks about the infamous story of how the inventor of chess requested an exponential amount of rice (and is rumoured to have lost his head).

Predictions on the Automation of White Collar Work:
These stats are what actually prompted me to propose to CPA Canada that we should have a talk that would discuss this phenomenon. The variety of sources that have chimed in on the topic - combined with the understanding of exponential change - highlights the importance of looking deeper into the trend instead of dismissing it as just fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). This of course is not just limited to the accounting profession, but impacts all white collar worker (check out IBM's Watson latest application to automate aspects of the legal profession

• "Job destruction will happen at a faster pace, with machine-driven job elimination overwhelming the market's ability to create valuable new ones.” (Gartner)
• “…knowledge work automaton tools and systems could take on tasks that would be equal to the output of 110 million to 140 million full-time equivalents (FTEs).”’ (McKinsey)
• ‘94% probability accounting/auditing will be automated’ (Oxford Study)
• Finance Department has seen a decrease from an average of 119 people (2004) to 71 people (2014); a reduction by 40% (Hackett Group; as taken from this WSJ article "The New Bookkeeper Is a Robot")

Exponential Technologies
As noted during the presentation, the key exponential technologies that are likely to enable the automation.

Artificial Intelligence: "Science of making computers do things that require intelligence when done by humans." During the presentation, I mention this pharmacist robot being able to dramatically reduce medications errors, which according to the FDA is responsible for 1.3 million injuries.

For other information check out this Deloitte publication on AI and Cognitive.

Internet of Things: "Billions of interconnected sensors and devices will soon exchange data; effectively the physical flow of goods, people, and things will now leave a “digital trail”." RFID inventory does provide some insights in how this digital exhaust left by physical goods can improve inventory management and responsiveness to customers (see this RFID Journal article for more details).

For more on IoT, check out the Deloitte TMT Prediction regarding the technology.

Blockchain: "The blockchain dis-intermediates the need for a centralized trusted authority to administer an exchange of value between parties." As I note in the presentation, I feel the blockchain needs a lot of nuance when discussing how the technology has the potential to disrupt the profession. The technology (as implemented in the exchange of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin) itself won't replace the audit because its controls are designed for the purposes of giving comfort to a retailer, such as Overstock.com, that the buyer has not spent the currency somewhere else. However, if a retailer was then to tell an auditor that they sold goods to these public addresses, the auditor would need to verify that the retailer was not selling the goods to itself (i.e. they would need to verify that the addresses that the retailer sold to are not controlled by the retailer). In other words a sale for the purposes of Bitcoin is not a sale for accounting purposes.

That being said, auditors can’t ignore blockchain as it is the first decentralized approach to exchange value that eliminates the need for a trusted intermediary.

To understand the blockchain better, check out the following videos:

• Blockchain technology will drastically change our lives: This video gives a good overview of the implications of bitcoin and illustrates the role of the network in maintaining the ledger.
• How Bitcoin works under the hood: There is a 5 minute non-tech video, 5 minute tech video and a 22 minute video, which all do a good job of using animation to explain how bitcoin is tamper-proof.
• Khan Academy: The videos are about 90 minutes in total, but it is comprehensive. 

Crowdsourcing: "Process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers."

For more on crowdsourcing, I wrote a post on the potential impact on crowdsourcing. The post gives a good background exploring the use-cases brought up by Jeff Howe (who coined the term crowdsourcing).

Near the end of the post, I noted that:

"Can accountants/auditors be crowdsourced like the way professional photographers were? It seems were crowdsourcing works best is an arena where you find hobbyists who do such things out of passion instead of obligation."

Since writing that post I found Gigwalk which illustrates how non-expert tasks within accounting or auditing can be done by the crowd (see this post near the bottom). Also, during the CATS conference it was noted that 50% of practitioners will be retiring over the next 5 to 10 years. Such retirees could form a huge pool of people who want to work casually in their retirement thereby enabling the audit to be crowdsourced.

Concluding thoughts
To meet the challenge of the exponential change, I feel that we need to do the following:

• Hands-on Approach to Technology: University courses on programming, data analytics and data sciences should become a standard part of the accounting student's education. Although tools change over time, I think accounting students who have an open-source statistical package like R would have more options in terms of employment. With respect to data science, (audit) sampling belongs to an era of small data. Consequently, for auditing theory to be keeping pace with the way big data is transforming the way organizations are dealing with their data auditors need to be able traverse data science and auditing theory. 
• Bring in the "hackers": An extension of the above recommendation, is to get the people who think outside the box and disrupt the way we do things.
• Greater focus on cyber security: According to Alec Ross, cyber security is currently a 400 billion dollar problem and is expected to be a $175 billion industry by 2020. Security is a natural extension for CPAs who already need to understand internal controls, governance and concepts of risk (impact, likelihood, threats, etc.). With IoT, the security risks can only be expected to grow exponentially as now even the IoT-enabled fridge can be hacked (and the FTC thinks so as well).
• Smart Contracts+AutoRepos of Smart Cars = Flash Crash¹⁰: As I have written previously about AlgoTrust (second post and first post), I noted that this was another area that CPAs can focus on - auditing algorithms. Just imagine how, these algorithms can feed into blockchain enabled smart contracts that could trigger a massive repossession of smart cars - leaving a city in chaos as people try to figure out how to get home. In other words, CPAs can act as independent monitors of algorithms to ensure such risks are safeguarded against. 
• CPAs-as-a-Crowd: CPAs should leverage the combined power of social and cognitive to get smarter by sharing knowledge and using "smart rooms" that use machine learning and other AI technologies. 

To brings such change the profession, will not the work of one entity alone. Firms, educators, professional bodies and companies need to work together to ensure that the CPA profession will thrive in the world of exponential change that is just around the corner. 

Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else.