The Accountant’s Rules of Chat GPT
As an artificial intelligence language model, ChatGPT has the ability to provide answers to a wide variety of questions and tasks. For accountants, this can be a powerful tool for performing financial analyses and calculations, researching tax laws and regulations, and providing recommendations to clients.
How can accountants use Chat GPT?
With the current iteration of Chat GPT (May 2023), I recommend that accountants utilize its features mainly for:
Writing, communication, and content creation - Chat GPT is excellent at taking information and summarizing it in plain English. When communicating about more technical topics, Chat GPT is an excellent tool to get started on the wording and organization of written content. In particular, the first drafts of blog posts, emails, and memos are excellent candidates for the software to help get you started!
Rough technical research - Chat GPT is fairly good at summarizing information in plain English, but tends to miss out on the details that accountants like to focus on. Because of this, asking questions with the intent of refreshing or gaining a broad understanding of a certain technical area can be a great use of the tool. On the other hand, asking specific questions can be finicky. Unless you know exactly what you are looking for, the software’s generative nature will focus on giving you a generally correct answer over a specific one.
What are the Rules?
To get the most out of ChatGPT, I believe that accountants should follow certain rules to ensure accuracy and specificity. Here are the rules I think accountants should use when using the latest version of Chat GPT for their work:
Rule 1: Don't Rely Solely on the Information from the AI response
While ChatGPT is a powerful tool, it’s important not to rely solely on the information provided in the initial output. Instead, use ChatGPT’s responses as a starting point for your research and analysis.
I respond to a large majority of my client questions with “it depends,” and it is very difficult to communicate all the context into Chat GPT without going through several iterations and even then, the information can be shaky. As I noted above, the tool is great for creating starting points but may not be accurate to the details. Knowing what an answer should look like will allow you to use the best parts of the software while mitigating the weaknesses of inaccuracy.
Rule 2: Be Specific with Your Prompts
The more specific your prompt, the more accurate and relevant the response from ChatGPT will be. Having specific prompts is an excellent way to work around getting broad answers from general questions. For example, instead of asking “What are the tax laws for small businesses?”, you could ask “What are the tax laws for small businesses in California that have less than $500,000 in annual revenue?”.
By providing specific details in your prompts, you can ensure that ChatGPT provides you with the most relevant information for your particular situation.
Rule 3: Reword the Initial Output
ChatGPT’s responses are generated based on the input it receives, and sometimes the initial output may not be exactly what you’re looking for. In these cases, it’s important to reword your prompt and ask ChatGPT again.
For example, if you ask ChatGPT for the tax laws for small businesses in California, it might provide you with a list of regulations that are too broad. In this case, you could rephrase your prompt to ask for the tax laws specific to your industry or for businesses with a certain amount of revenue.
By following these rules, accountants can more effectively use ChatGPT as a tool to support themselves and their clients. If you are an accountant aiming to use the software, remember to be specific with your prompts, don’t rely solely on the information from the prompt, and reword the initial output if necessary.