ChatGPT4 for Tax & Accounting Research: Proceed with Caution!

Should you rely on advice or facts you get from ChatGPT4, or AI in general on technical tax or accounting topics?

Based on my experience, AI is great for generating ideas, discovering other perspectives, including competing ideas, and for getting a general overview of a topic. It can create action plans and is wonderful for summarizing and organizing technical information from various sources. It can also translate technical information into language that is much easier to understand.

However, it cannot be relied on to perform mathematical computations, no matter how simple. In this video I provided ChatGPT4 with three pieces of information about an accrual based financial statement:

• Beginning Accounts Receivable balance.

• Ending Accounts Receivable balance.

• Accrual net income/loss.

I asked it to convert the accrual based net loss into a cash-basis net income/loss.

It had the basic idea, but choked when it had to actually do the mathematical calculation.

The explanation it gave was great, but the minor error it made would have been very confusing to anyone who lacked experience in this accrual to cash process.

It's just not reliable for this type of work, yet...