good morning,
Generative AI has been a hot topic in the financial community for the past few months. From big banks banning ChatGPT, to CFOs building FP&A tools using ChatGPT, to MIT researchers demonstrating FP&A scenario generation using ChatGPT and DALL-E 2. With generative AI becoming less of an obscure concept, are finance leaders more willing to embrace the technology?
Tom Hood, EVP of Business Engagement and Growth at the International Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), certainly encourages employees to familiarize themselves with ChatGPT and how to use it. Hood holds regular meetings with his Future of Finance Leadership Advisory Group at the AICPA, which consists of more than 50 senior finance leaders from major US companies.
“Finance leaders don’t want ChatGPT itself in their company because it’s not secure,” explains Hood. So they’re telling teams to test it, but “don’t use real data,” he says. “It’s moving so fast right now and it’s so hyped that you have to pay attention to it even if you don’t care.” “Their board and CEO are asking about it,” Hood said, with Microsoft’s investment in ChatGPT, the technology will eventually be used in applications such as Excel, which some finance teams still use today. You pointed out that it will be used in your application.
CFO perspective
When I recently spoke with Autodesk CFO Debbie Clifford, she also mentioned the burgeoning focus on generative AI and finance. “We are not using generative AI in finance today,” Clifford told me. “But what will I tell you, I think we should be. I think this is an area that we absolutely have to explore. We do not have a strategy within finance at this time.”
But Autodesk’s finance team uses machine learning algorithms. “What we’ve been doing is taking some of the biggest areas of revenue and spending and processing large datasets to determine what happens when we use machine learning algorithms in our predictions. That’s it,” explains Clifford. “And it’s getting better and better. This is a very important cross-check for us: ‘Human says 10, does the model say 10?'” she said. Added. But humans add judgment that is incredibly important and never goes away. ”
Meanwhile, Alight CFO Katie Rooney recently said: luck Emerging CFO incident that the finance organization used predictive models to develop scenario plans for the risks of a potential downturn. Regarding the use of ChatGPT, Rooney raised data protection concerns. “Given the role of the CFO and finance department, a focus on security is becoming increasingly important,” she explained. “I spend more time in that field than I did a few years ago. How we share data is very important. When you think about it, I think it’s an important strategy where finance seems to be involved.”
Colette Kress, CFO of Nvidia Corp., noted the growing interest in AI in business. Speaking at her Technology Media and Telecom Conference at Morgan Stanley in March, Kress said: “And what’s driving that inflection point is not just the focus that we’ve been doing in terms of large-scale language models, recommender engines, or natural language processing, but we’re now seeing generative AI, especially ChatGPT. Just to make sure people understand how this can help in some of the simplest cases.”
The finance leaders Hood spoke to said, “We’re going to look at new technologies as they come out and determine how AI is impacting them or being built into them,” he said. say.
Cheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
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big deal
The Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) US Consumer Technology Software and Services Industry Forecast projects that software and services will account for 31% of the US consumer technology market ($151 billion) in 2023. various services. Games continue to be the largest form of digital entertainment, according to the report. But for the first time since forecasting the gaming software category, the CTA estimates US gaming software revenue will shrink by 6% to $48.1 billion in 2022. The study also found that consumers are experiencing subscription fatigue. “With so many services available, consumers may try to save money by bundling or reducing the number of services they use,” he said.
deeper
The report, “Speaking with Confidence: 4 Solutions That Work,” published in Wharton’s Business Journal, offers four tips for communicating with confidence in the workplace. The first tip is to “throw away the hedge”. When a person says “almost,” “almost certainly,” “probably,” “roughly,” “somewhat,” “probably,” “probably,” “rarely,” or “usually,” they hedge “We are doing,” according to the report.
Leader board
Karl Melander, the CFO of Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERIC) will step down at the end of the first quarter of 2024. A hiring process will begin to determine a successor. In his statement, Melander said, “If there was ever a good time to move on to a new career adventure, I feel that now is the time and I am excited about what the future holds.
Julianna Barrica Appointed EVP and CFO of Bancorp, Inc. (Nasdaq: HOPE), the holding company of Bank of Hope. David P. Malone, who took over as Interim Chief Financial Officer on January 6, has agreed to remain until April 30 to assist with the transition process. Barrika, 45, until recently served as SVP, Director of IR and Corporate Finance at East West Bank, a wholly owned company of East West Bancorp, Inc. (Nasdaq: EWBC). Prior to joining East West, he was Director of Equity Research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. She started her career as an investment banking analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette’s Financial Institutions Group.
heard
“We communicate very honestly, openly, transparently, and authentically, and discuss issues that employees want to talk about. [That’s] It is very important today because employees want to work for humans. ”
— Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco Systems, said: luck in an interview. Cisco takes the top spot on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list.
