The controller and the bots that chat
There are moments in time when you feel that the set of plausible future states of the world shifts noticeably. You wake up to just another day but end up going to bed in a distinctly different reality.
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
Sometimes these moments do stretch out, spanning years. There's almost two years between Mr Krenz watching helplessly as the Berlin wall came down (on 9 November 1989) and the tired look on Mr Gorbachev’s face as he returned to Moscow (on the morning of 22 August 1991), victorious but irrelevant. Sometimes they are compressed in time: Everyone born before that wall came down in the western world remembers the long day when the twin towers fell.
Sometimes these inflexion points bunch up, and in the past year, I have had that feeling twice. This is written around the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, a momentous crime that is not the topic here. And then, in the late autumn of that same year of 2022, they let loose ChatGPT and its relatives, notably Sydney Bing, and Bard, and friends. Some of these are just rattling their cages, not yet loose in the wild, but the bottle is open, and the genie is out. Generative AI in general, and large language models (LLM) with chat interfaces, in particular, are now part of the landscape we inhabit. Everyone, controllers and finance professionals most certainly included, is thinking about the implications for them and their work. Will they replace me?
About the author
Anders Tallberg is Senior Fellow at Hanken & SSE Executive Education. Anders has previously worked at Hanken School of Economics, as professor of accounting and head of the Department of Accounting. Anders has authored books, software applications and scientific papers on various aspects of accounting. Among other, he currently serves as the vice chairman of the Finnish Accounting Standards Board, and as a member of the Finnish Auditing Board.
