Why accountants should embrace Machine Learning

RECENT technology advancements have placed Artificial Intelligence (AI), along with its subfield of Machine Learning (ML), at the forefront of transforming the accounting industry. Major accounting practices are starting to implement ML to streamline their operations with the aim of achieving time and cost reduction, increased productivity and improved accuracy.

Before adopting ML, it is important to differentiate between ML and analytics. Analytics is the analysis of quantitative data to gain insights from the data with the objective of being able to make informed decisions. ML is an analysis method which uses mathematical algorithms to train computers in the processing and analysing of large amounts of data, allowing them to generate rules, recognise patterns and make classification predictions. One common ML technique is the use of neural networks - an algorithm designed to function the same way as a human brain.

This should be good news to accountants as repetitive, manual and tedious tasks can now be handled by computers while they can focus more of their efforts on higher-level, more sophisticated tasks that involve professional judgment and interpretation to provide clients with insights.