Dive into the fast-paced and exciting world of artificial intelligence with our podcast series! Join our expert guests, Dr. Mfon Akpan and Dr. Scott Dell, as they unravel the mysteries of AI, explore the cutting-edge developments in language models like ChatGPT, and discuss the massive impact of these technologies on industries like accounting. From the thrilling acceleration of AI adaptation to ethical concerns and security implications, this podcast explores it all. Tune in to stay at the forefront of one of the hottest topics in technology today!

Connect with our speakers:
Dr. Mfon Akpan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmfonakpan/

Dr. Scott Dell -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/drscottcpa/
SF Magazine Article by our speakers

Full Episode Transcript:
Adam:            Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today we're diving deep into the world of AI. A subject that has been making waves across industries. Transforming the way we work, communicate, and think. With me are our esteemed guests; Dr. Mfon Akpan, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Methodist University. And Dr. Scott Dell, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Francis Marion University. They bring a wealth of knowledge and insights into AI's history, its current impact, and what's on the horizon. 

 

We'll discuss everything from AI's phenomenal growth; to its applications, ethics, security concerns, and much more. So buckle up and let's embark on this fascinating journey into the digital revolution.

 

Adam:            Mfon and Scott, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're really excited we're going to be talking about AI and ChatGPT, and all that comes underneath that. And we're really excited to have this because this is a very hot topic, and people are talking about it. You see articles about it every day. You see updates, you see leaders writing letters saying, "Let's stop all AI for six months." Et cetera. Maybe we could just start at a high level. What is AI? What are these chat bots? What are these things doing for us?

 

Scott:              Amazing tool, and thank you for having us. It's a pleasure to be here and to share. I'll kick things off, Mfon, if it's all right. This artificial intelligence has been around for over 60 years. So you say, "Wait a minute, why is it so new?"

 

Well, what's new is the capabilities because of the computing power we now have. And the tool is amazing; it is changing life as we know it. We haven't seen the likes of this since the printing press. It's an environment that can really do things, change work, augment work, replace work, but makes things better. Your thoughts, Mfon?

 

Mfon:             Yes, and I think some of the excitement around it is that we haven't seen this type of growth, in a platform as well. So you think about it was released, November 30th 2022. Five days, the platform got a million users. So you think about in 2010, it took Instagram two and a half months to get to a million users. So there's a lot of excitement, and then there's a lot of acceleration and speed around the platform, as well.

 

Scott:              As a follow up to that, 100 million users mark was reached in two months. Compared to TikTok, I think, it was nine months to get that far, that fast. So it has been an amazing adaptation of the technology.

 

Adam:            So maybe we can talk a little bit about how does it work. And, then, from there, maybe, talk about what benefits it may have for the accounting profession as a whole.

 

Mfon:             Well, it's a language model, so it has an interface. So you're able to go to the platform, you go to the website, and you're able to ask it questions, or you can copy and paste information and ask it to do things. So from the profession side, if you're asking it to solve problems. You can ask it to solve a problem, or you can have it write an email, write a letter, it can produce content for you.

 

Scott:              And as Mfon mentioned, it is an LLM, one of those three-letter acronyms, a large language model. But what it does is it projects words. So it looks at the previous word and it says, "Mm, what would the next logical word be?" 

 

                        Which, sometimes, if you've ever played the game of telephone, as a kid, sometimes, you get to the end of that line and nothing resembles how it started out. And that sometimes happens, as well, with the ChatGPT and GPT-4 environment. Because it is projecting with probabilities, "Yep, I think this is the next word." And sometimes it's dead wrong. It's called hallucinating, it's the actual technical term.

 

Mfon:             It does hallucinate. But what's so fascinating when you use it, it is projecting. But I guess it feels like you get the impression that it's thinking, even though it's not thinking. So you can ask it questions and it will give you answers, so there's that interaction. But it is projecting and it does, sometimes, hallucinate, or make up answers, give you false information. 

 

Scott:              And the fear I really have, in the hands of professionals, we can, probably, take a look and say, "Oh, this isn't quite right. This is illogical." But for a novice, and for newbies like our students, they will look at this and say, "The English is so good. It just flows so, logically, it must be right." And it's not, although, often enough it is right. So there's a balance.

 

Adam:            Yes, so talking about people using it. Obviously corporations, people within corporations, within organizations, are using it. Within the accounting profession are using it, and people are having to create policies. There are new workarounds coming out there. People are saying, "Okay, you can use this, but you can use it for that."

 

I saw one example, where somebody put in a fake balance sheet and said, "Analyze this for me." And it gave a really interesting analysis. Then, you have to worry, "Oh, am I putting somebody's data into this thing?" And you have to worry about those things. And, so, how can this tool be used for management accounting? In the accounting space, obviously, without giving away too much personal data?

 

Scott:              Security consciousness is we need to be there. I mean, you're hearing about the deepfakes. I just heard about a scandal in Hong Kong, a banker that sent millions of dollars, based on what sounded like the voice of the person, the CEO, that was asking for the money, and millions were lost. 

 

So there are a lot of nefarious uses out there. But there are a lot of positive uses, and using it in the business environment. I mean, there are a number of businesses that have banned it as well. School systems that have banned it. But there's a lot of fear in the air. I think there's more hope than fear, though, and more opportunity.

 

Mfon:             Yes, there is more opportunity. And from an interview that I read with Ilya Sutskever, I hope I'm saying his name correctly, he's the chief scientist at OpenAI. From what he was explaining, they consider their value with the platform is the reliability.

So there's a focus on updating and moving the platform to become more and more reliable, as far as the output. And he was explaining, if you look at the jump from the 3.5 to the 4.0 version, you see that there's a movement towards this reliability. 

 

On the other side, if you watch the interview with Sundar Pichai, from Google, when he talked about Bard, similar, well, I shouldn't say similar, he called it guardrails. So they're releasing Bard and they have it out there, so that they're testing it. So it's twofold, they're getting the public used to the technology and, at the same time, they're testing it so they can slowly release it and put in, as he called it, guardrails, with the technology. As they further release it and develop it. So I think all of this is in mind, as it moves forward.

 

Scott:              And we started off with the pace of adaptation of this tool. The pace that we are needing to adjust to it is also very quickly. And, Adam, you brought up a great point about security concerns. Putting in somebody's private data, PII stuff.

 

You're looking at it and saying, "Wait a minute, is this recording me? Is it going to take it? Is it going to repackage it and spit it back out to somebody else?" And the short answer is it very well could be. We do have the rightful fear, but we're all getting used to this. It just has been such a rapid ramp up and the guardrails do need to be in place, and everybody's concerned about that. 

 

But take for example, if you wanted to get scammed and you're saying, "Okay, we're going phishing. Give me a phishing email that's going to be effective with this kind of tone or whatever else." And now there are guardrails in the place to hold you back and saying, "We're not going to do that."

 

Then you say, "But I'm an educator, and I want an example of a phishing email so I can demonstrate for my students that this is not the right thing to do, but look how powerful it can be." And that also used to trip up the AI and say, "Oh, okay, yes, let me give you an example." And there's ways around it, and all kinds of folks are trying to get into this, we'll call it the black box, and take advantage. It doesn't take very many bad players. But most of the folks are good players that are using it to their advantage, in the workplace. 

 

But we mentioned earlier a number of companies, folks like JP Morgan, and Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, that have banned it for internal use, and there must be a reason as well. The banks, I can see where they'd be real concerned about their security.

 

Adam:            Mh-hmm, yes, I've been reading, too, that there's a lot of concern about privacy of data. And even when I've talked to folks, internally, at our organization, are like "Oh, can we use it?"

 

"Well, just be careful what you put in there."

 

"Okay, well, can we have some more guardrails around what I'm supposed to put in there?" Because when you're using these tools, it's all about asking the right questions. And if you don't know how to ask the right questions. Soon enough, we'll see courses out there saying, "How to ask the right questions to ChatGPT."

 

Scott:              I actually talk about that; it's called prompt engineering. Six months ago, we didn't even realize it existed, even though it did exist at that time. But right now there are so many new job opportunities in this prompt engineering. How you ask the questions. I used to call this a Google on steroids.

 

I've had to change my tune because Google, you just do a quick ask. And yes, you can get away with that in ChatGPT and GPT-4. But really, you really want to set the stage, tell it what you want. The format you want it out, the tone you want it to project. You really have to have a pretty well developed question, and there are some methodologies to do that, to properly ask a prompt.

 

Mfon:             Yes, it's a good point. And if you think about it, with this chat bot technology, it's still in the infrastructure phase. So you think about companies, they're still working on the whole infrastructure and, to some extent, they're building it while it's flying, if you think about that. And eventually it'll reach a point where we'll get to the application phase. 

 

But a lot of this, in my opinion, is moving way faster than we've seen before. So it's not new, but it's faster than before. So I try to think about if you think about social networks, social media because they compare, like Scott was saying, reach a 100 million monthly active users, or MAU, that's one of the metrics for social media. You think about 2002, there was Friendster. I don't know if anybody remembers Friendster. 

 

Scott:              We actually do.

 

Adam:            2003, Myspace, and that had 25 million users, and that was one of the top websites out there, at that time. And, then, Facebook comes along, Twitter, and then now you've got TikTok, a billion monthly active users. And, I think, Facebook is at 1.9, or something like that, billion monthly.

 

So if you look at it in that way, it's still moving. But this isn't happening from 2002 to the 2020s. This is happening, really, if you look at it, in months. We've seen a lot of exponential growth.

 

Scott:              Yes, the modern AI, as we know it, as we see it, is still in its infancy. And there's been discussion something about AGI, and you're talking about Artificial General Intelligence. Which is the level of where it's going to be in, who knows, six months, two years, five years, 10 years.

 

I mean, GPT-2 was released back in 2019, then we had GPT-3 in 2021. So it has been ramping up. But, well, just wait till this stuff hits adolescents. We think our kids are off the guardrails, let's watch out for ChatGPT, and GPT-4, and GPT-5 eventually to come. Even though they put the brakes a little bit, they're slowing that down.

 

Mfon:             Or another platform or that'll rise up.

 

Adam:            Yes, I was just going to say that. You mentioned Myspace and then it was taken over by Facebook. Chat GPT is the big one now. I mean, I remember Myspace, I had a Myspace page, and then Facebook, I was like, "What's Facebook? What's this new thing?" And everybody gets the Facebook page. And, then, you forget about Myspace because it's no longer the relevant platform. And, then, you talk to kids, nowadays, you say Facebook. 

They're like, "What's Facebook? I'm using…" whatever the platform they're using. So there's always a newer platform that's going to come along. 

 

And I think the other thing to remember, too, is ChatGPT, like you said, it's in a beta. It's not even fully out, but yet people are using it like it's fully there. And you have to remember those guardrails and, maybe, we can talk a little bit. How can companies use this within their organization, in a safe way? Because, obviously, you don't want to do too major stuff, but you can also utilize it for helping in some ways, too.

 

Scott:              Well, as previously mentioned, we started saying you got to be careful and we need to educate. The same way we need to educate, "Don't click on that attachment on that email." Because it might open something up that's going to do something and cause a ransomware to be loaded, or whatever it might be. We need to educate and train our folks to say, "Well, how do we properly and effectively use this stuff?" Because you can go off the deep end and can go any direction. 

 

And I mentioned, earlier, that as a professional, you can use this stuff and you can acknowledge, "Okay, wait a minute, this is nonsense, or this is really good." It can augment what you're doing. If you know what you're doing, that's the best use to let it help you do what you do best, and you can ask it those questions. You can complement where you're going. If you're new and you're trying to figure out how to use this stuff, you, again, need to have that back-

 

Mfon:             Yes, to piggyback on that, I think, at this moment, and you have to be careful to say, at this moment, with this March 23rd version of GPT-4. If you're a practitioner, you're using it, it can make you better if you have that skill set. So it has the possibility to make you more efficient.

 

Now, if you're not in the profession. So if you're not an accountant and you're looking to use it to do accounting, it can have the opposite effect. But what is happening, if they continue, with their focus on reliability, that gap is going to get narrower. It's going to get smaller, but it's not going to disappear. 

 

Scott:              And you were asking about effective use of this, as a professional. The idea that you need to understand the field, to be able to ask the right questions. To be an effective learner, you have to be an effective questioner. To be an effective questioner will help you go far in any direction you want. If you're just going to trust blindly, it's not going to be effective for you.

 

Mfon:             And from a business side, we're going to see more companies partnering with OpenAI. So Chegg has partnered with ChatGPT to create CheggMate. Bloomberg has created their Bloomberg GPT. So we'll see more and more of these applications or partnerships, with GPT and other platforms. Again, moving from that infrastructure phase to more of an application phase.

 

Adam:            Yes, there seems to be an infinite waitlist for those who are trying to partner with them. If you try to say, "I want some sort of partnership, I'll work with it." 

 

They say, "Well, we've got you on a list and we'll get back to you when we can." They're not even giving a time period now, which is really interesting.

 

Scott:              Although you hear about the majors-

Adam:            The majors, of course.

 

Scott:              You hear about the Metas of the world. You hear about the Alphabets of the world, the Microsofts of the world, the OpenAIs of the world. But there are hundreds of other artificial intelligent applications out there. From music generators, to video generators, to rewriting, and tools, that there's a lot of NVC, there's a lot of venture capital money that's going towards these.

 

It feels like the .com boom. If you were in 1998 and you had the .com in your name, toys.com or china.com, people threw money at you. Now you've got .ai, people are throwing money at you. Some of them are going to stick and some of them are pretty powerful. I've used a variety of these tools, and they're impressive and they can do some amazing things.

 

Adam:            I mean, just thinking of the example of that picture of the Pope, in that white puffy jacket, that went around, and everybody thought was real. And then they're like, "Wait, that was created by AI." And it fooled so many people. News outlets were reporting on it, that it was this great picture.

 

Scott:              That's right.

 

Adam:            So I want to circle back to what you were saying, Scott, about novices and people just learning. And to be a great learner, you have to be a great questioner. And, so, this makes me think about accounting education and people in schools. And I know that ChatGPT had created another tool for professors to use, to check in against plagiarism and stuff like that.

 

                        But how can this be used in an accounting education? Because the people, the kids, that are coming up, they're more tech savvy than folks who are older, and they're going to continue to be more and more savvy. But how can we best use this as we train up the next generation?

 

Scott:              Well, I'll tell you, this is not only changing the world of work, it's also changing the world of education. We need to change as educators. We need to level up. We keep talking about critical thinking. That critical thinking is a powerful environment that we need to help our students take advantage of.

 

But it's even more important now with the use of these AI tools. Because when they ask a question, well, students, and I hate to stereotype any student, but they don't have the bandwidth nor the base of knowledge that the experts and the professionals have. So they're going to take a look at some of this technology and trust it a little more blindly than you or I would, probably, like. 

 

So they are exposed to it, they are using it. I've surveyed three classes recently. One over three quarters were using it. Another about half, a little over a half we're using it. And a third under a quarter we're using it. Which means they're using it.

 

The key is, are faculty using it? Are the educators using it? And when we do, we realize they're going to take home exam and they're going to play with it, look at it, and say, "Oh, great, I get the answer."

 

But I will share, I've done two exams, I call them "You're the auditor exams." And I actually ask a question, multiple choice. I give it the AI answer that ChatGPT generated, and then I give it three alternatives. So this is the new multiple choice format. So what was the result? Randomly, these two exams, it was about 52% that ChatGPT was right. So 20 out of 39 right, 19 out of 39 wrong. 

 

I told my students, "You want to get a 50 on this exam, just circle A for every one of these answers and you're halfway there. But if you want to get a better grade. You're probably going to want to really do the problem, do the question, and evaluate for yourself."

 

But they have access to the post of ChatGPT. We need to embrace that, and use that, and apply that to teach them how the rights and the wrongs, the ethical use of this tool.

 

Mfon:             Definitely it is a challenge because you think about we're training students to go into the workforce. Definitely the workforce wants more efficient and productive workers, and this tool can definitely provide that or facilitate that. So you want to expose students to it because, eventually, the workforce is going to demand it, for greater output.

 

So that's the big challenge. And I think the other challenge educators have been facing, is it's been changing so much. And we're getting a little breather right now, between the 4.0 and the GPT-5. Because you think about it, we had the rollout of the 3.5, then the 3.5 Plus, then the 4.0. And really, there was a big jump between the very first rollout in November 30th, the 3.5, to the 4.0, today, and we have to maneuver and adjust. So we can, at least, set some sort of baseline, right now, to catch up.

 

Adam:            I'm in the field of education, adult education, as well, and it's interesting when I talk to colleagues. I was talking to a colleague of mine and he said, "Well, yes, I was doing a three-day seminar for the internal organization and I used ChatGPT to create my beginning starting point, and then I adjusted it from there."

 

                        So, like you said, Scott, educators need to really jump on this. Because it could be people who are professionals can utilize it to say, "Hey, I'm going to create an outline using ChatGPT if I can put all this material in there." But then if all of us, professionals, start to do that, are we losing the ability to create these things on our own.

 

Scott:              Well, two factors, one is in the career space. Mfon brought a great point on employers are expecting you to have this skill. 

 

Adam:            Yes.

 

Scott:              I saw a survey that over 90% of employers want to see that as a tool you've used, experienced, and have some knowledge of, even more so than blockchain these days. But the other side is being able to apply, and as you were just talking about, the tools, you can use it for so many things. You can use it to summarize; "Here is my LinkedIn URL, give me a summary of who I'm going to be talking to."

 

"Here's an article; I don't have time to read this six pages. Give me a summary of what this is all about." And you can use those things, and it's, usually, pretty good and pretty accurate in reflecting that. And then you say, "Give me the ten-top points, in bullet points." Then go ahead, "I need to write my own blog, and my own post. I need to set up, give me a two-week schedule to implement this program, which is going to include these steps." Or, "First of all, tell me the steps. Then make me a two-week schedule or a 30-day schedule."

 

"I'm on a diet, I'm traveling, give me a tour. How about some restaurants?"

 

Back to the hallucination, though, it gets names wrong. I actually made a list of the 50 CPA associations, across the country. The societies’ CPAs, I said, "Give me the executive director, their email, their address, their phone, and their abbreviation." It got every executive director, or CEO, wrong. It got every email address for those CEOs, obviously, wrong. It made them up. It made up names, but it sounds so good. I looked at it and said, "Oh, this is cool." 

 

And then I realized, "But South Carolina, and Massachusetts, Wisconsin, I know these guys. I've never heard of these people, who the heck are they?" And the same thing for education journal articles. Book titles, it makes up book names, like, "Give me a list of the top 25 books in the career space." If I'm looking for this kind of role. And it gave me 15 or 20 that were actually pretty good and pretty well recognized, and three or four, I said, "I've never heard of these." And the reason was they didn't exist. So you look at that and start saying, "Okay, it's got good stuff, but it's got a balance."

 

Mfon:             Yes, but I think as that reliability and the focus on that on ending that hallucination, as far as the education portion. There's going to be way more value and emphasis on critical thinking and the problem solving skills, and not using that as... So I think it'll shift even more.

 

Scott:              The only constant is change, and you're right about that. Those exams that I told had a roughly 46%, 52%, depending on the exam, was a 3.5. Jumping to 4.0, we're over 80%. So it's improving, too. 

 

I discovered this in December I said, "Okay, I've got an exam, let me play with it and see what it does. The first five out of six questions, it got right. And I said, "Oh, my students are going to cheat like mag dogs, and I can't give a take home exam ever again." But the next six out of seven questions, it got wrong. And then I was more worried because, again, I know how trusting students can be when they look at the logical, the good English, the nice flow, and then get a wrong answer. But they would trust it because of the proper English and the flow.

 

Adam:            So that's a great example of how you can incorporate it into your classroom. Are there other ways you can integrate that or similar tools into the classroom, as you were building this?

 

Scott:              I'm using it daily, in terms of asking a question for the day kind of thing, and that response, I actually, grade it. I discuss it with my students, and then they grade it. And in three different classes, in the same day, once I got a B+ for one, I got a D for another, and I got a CC+ on a third. So I'm an academic, I'll grade them. 

 

Then we show what was wrong, what the shortcomings are. But every time you get a different answer, and it's not always improving. It's not stepping up to say, okay, this first time, I asked it this, next time that, it depends on the word choices. We're going back to the beginning. "Ah, this word sounds good after the next word." And that's the flow. 

 

I once asked it the question, "So when did the dragons defeat the Roman Empire?" And it said, "In 650 BCE, king so and so and the dragons defeated the Roman Empire. But 200 years later, the Romans fought back and were restored to order." Whatever it was. I couldn't get that answer again, by the way. I've been in there since, trying to ask the same or similar question. And it says, "But dragons are mythical creatures, they don't exist." So it does learn, but it also can give you some pretty far-out answers. 

 

Mfon:             Yes, it does, and as educators, we need to expose our students to it, talk about it. We can't really bury our heads in the sand and pretend like, "You know what, this isn't here, it's not coming." They are using it, and it's important to at least understand how they're using it. Understand what type of access they have to it. 

 

Because I survey my students; I have some students who have the free version, and they've tried it a few times. I have other students that have the paid version and they are using it every day, diligently, and they let me know. So it's important to understand that and get a gauge on it, and then dive into it and use it because it's not going away. It is not going to go away.

 

Scott:              And it really starts back at secondary education. I mean, the State of New York has banned it. Can't have it on the Chromebooks, can't access it. The City of Baltimore looking at it saying "No, can't do it." The City of Seattle. 

 

But what's that telling our students? And what's that telling our environment? And what's that going to do for graduates? When the employers are saying, "We want folks with experience, even if they're not college graduates, even high school graduates. We want them to have some experience."

 

So the haves and the have not barrier is going to get wider because students that can't get it on their school computer can go home, "Mom or dad can I use your computer for school?" Who's going to deny them? But the students, I'll call the have nots, that don't have a parent with Internet access or a computer, and are stuck with their school computer, now they can't access it.

 

So what happens at graduation? We have the haves that played with it, used it, even though they banned it. And the have nots that don't have that skill set or level, or they both go to college and, again, there's that still gap coming into college. So our work's cut out for us. But Mfon is so right about not being able to bury our head in the sand. We need to embrace it, use it, apply it, and help our students do the same.

 

Mfon:             And that's a good point, because with more penetration of ChatGPT and other platforms like it, there will be that, I guess, you can call it the AI gap. So you'll start to see there'll be a gap between those who are using it or have exposure to it, and those who do not.

 

Scott:              I'll quote you on that AI gap, for certain. 

Adam:            I was reading an article, I saw an article yesterday, I think, it was on CNBC or one of those things they got. Somebody was quoting it and linked to it, and it was listing this very large number of organizations, that are starting to look for ChatGPT as experience on resumes even now. And it's not just saying, "I know about ChatGPT." But what can you do with it? And being able to express what you can do with it on your resume, that's a game changer right there.

 

Scott:              There are a lot of HR folks fearing and saying, "Well, if they use it to write a cover letter, how can I tell if they used it?" Well, actually, if they use it, more power to them. They're, actually, applying the technology to something. And then they say, "Well, we can't differentiate."

 

Well, maybe you don't want to because everyone's going to be able to have great cover letters. Now we got to look deep at something different. Maybe content, maybe certifications, maybe the ability to understand and integrate. But that prompt engineering is alive and well, and we really need to embrace that, too.

 

Adam:            So, as we're wrapping up the conversation, as we look to the future. What can we do as practitioners in the space? We've talked a lot about educators. What can we do, as we move forward? And what are some steps we could take as takeaways?

 

Mfon:             I would say the, big one, as a practitioner, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And you have to have that life-long learning mindset, at this point. And dive in and use the technology as much as you can, and learn as much as you can about it because it's changing, it's growing.

 

You've got ChatGPT, you've got Google's Bard, which is developing. You've got Caktus AI. So you have so many of these various platforms, and they're going to be more and more widely adopted. So understanding how they work, and where they're going, and how they apply to your practice, I think is very important.

 

Scott:              And most of us have been using AI whether we realize it or not. You look at Alexa, you look at Siri, and you look at Netflix, they've been using AI for a while, that means we've been using it for a while.

 

But I, wholeheartedly, agree that we need to embrace it. Because, frankly, our clients and customers are going to be using it. Our staffs are going to be using it. Our kids are going to be using it. Owners need to be using it. We need to get comfortable with it, appreciate it, and take advantage of what it can do, it can magnify. It's just like RPA, Robotic Process Automation, it can take a three-week process and complete it in two hours, cool stuff. But so can AI. 

 

Mfon:             Yes, and if you think about it, if you have a business and your competitor is doing more with less, they can outpace you, potentially.

 

Scott:              And I want to clarify the job challenge. There was a study, out there, that said 85 million jobs will be eliminated, The World Economic Forum, put that out, by 2025. And they said 97 million will be created. To me, that's a net gain of 12 million. And think of the profession 100 years ago, we had 30 accountants for a 100-person company. Then we had ten accountants for a 100-person company. Now we have one and a half or two accountants for a 100-person company.

 

Does that mean we have a bunch of out of work, unemployed accountants? Well, last I heard, there was a shortage. So there really is a need. But it gives an opportunity for accountants to do higher level stuff. To enter the C-suite, to be able to help make decisions and in process.

So learn the tools, take advantage of the tools. And, as we said before, it's a springboard for a lot of opportunities.

 

Adam:            It definitely is. And I know we could keep talking about this for a long time. But I'm going to promise our listeners that I'll have these two guys back on, in the future. Because I know, probably, a year from now, six months from now, this conversation will be completely different. And, so, if they're willing, we'll do that. Thank you both for coming on today. It's been a great conversation.

 

Mfon:             Absolutely, thank you for having us.

 

Scott:              It's been an honor. Much appreciated.

  

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