A 3-minute introduction to ChatGPT for accountants
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a chat program that acts like a very smart research assistant. You can ask it questions and add instructions about how it should go about forming its answer.
This is different to a search engine, which responds with a list of links to pages with the answer to your query. ChatGPT will compose a multi-paragraph answer to your query, usually in excellent English, based on webpages it has read.
This is what the G in GPT stands for – generative. It will generate (i.e. create) an answer from scratch, drawing from its base of knowledge. How big is that base? Very, very large. It’s impossible to know all the things that ChatGPT knows, but you can assume it includes the entirety of Wikipedia and a good percentage of the text on all major websites.
How can I customise ChatGPT’s answers?
If you don’t like the way it wrote the answer, you can ask it to write the answer to the question again. You can simply click a button to generate a new response from the same query, or you can modify the query in a couple of interesting ways.
Sidenote: with ChatGPT and other AI tools, the query is called a prompt.
Emphasis. You can ask ChatGPT to include more text about a particular area, such as how GST applies to a particular topic.
Style. ChatGPT can mimic certain styles. You can ask ChatGPT to write its response in the style of William Shakespeare – and it will do it instantly. Pick any famous writer and it will make an attempt at writing the text in that style. This is not just a fun party trick. It can also mimic your own style. If you want to send an email to someone written in your voice, ChatGPT can do it for you. Just paste text from emails or documents you have written and ask ChatGPT to produce an answer to your next prompt in the same style.
Tone. ChatGPT also knows how to write in various tones. You can ask it to rewrite a response in a more relaxed or more formal voice. ChatGPT will do it in seconds. This is useful if you want to send an email to a client who you know really well.
What about ChatGPT and security?
Don't paste client data. ChatGPT is a database and stores information people enter.
ChatGPT has said it won’t record user data and use it to improve future answers. But internet companies frequently ask for forgiveness rather than permission, so act accordingly.
Accuracy. ChatGPT really is more like a human researcher than a calculator. It makes up its own response to your prompts, and sometimes these responses are slightly incorrect or flat out wrong. Treat it as a rough draft to guide and accelerate your own work. User beware.
Why is ChatGPT important?
ChatGPT is widely considered to be the biggest technology breakthrough for office workers since the personal computer. Below are a couple of reasons why it has received such acclaim.
ChatGPT is the first AI tool in its category to achieve worldwide success. It is the fastest growing application of all time – just five days to reach 1 million users. (Other hit applications, by comparison Netflix: 3.5 years Twitter: 2 years Facebook: 10 months Spotify: 5 months Instagram: 2.5 months.) Five months later, the website receives 1 billion monthly visitors and has 100 million active users.
ChatGPT can save you a lot of time in many ways. It is great for creating a first draft of emails, documents and arguments. Sometimes it will be good enough to copy, paste and send. Other times you will need to rewrite sections or the whole response. But it usually saves you from coming up with the starting point yourself. You can avoid the terror of a blank page.
Software companies are rapidly embedding ChatGPT into many applications. Search engines, BI tools, marketing software, databases. Soon it will be everywhere. We have an opportunity to get used to it and become smart users of it.
ChatGPT is already claiming that it can produce basic tax returns. You wouldn’t want to rely on it, but it will improve. There are various hurdles and quality issues but the potential of the platform is simultaneously daunting and exciting. No-one has any idea where it will end up.
Given it is less than six months old at time of writing, the full capabilities and impact of ChatGPT won’t be known for years. The early indications are that it will provide a massive productivity boost to all knowledge workers.
How can I learn how to use ChatGPT?
Easy – experiment. Get in there and throw a couple of tasks at it and check out how it responds.
Theory and Motion is running in-house workshops to help firms get up to speed quickly on how to use ChatGPT in compliance, advisory and admin roles. The workshop includes a general introduction to ChatGPT, popular tasks such as writing emails, sections of reports and checklists, and guidelines on how to use the tool safely and effectively.
If you are interested, please book a ChatGPT workshop for your firm.
