Thinking about Count Rostov and electric motors while lecturing at LSU

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Last week I gave an all-day lecture to accounting/internal audit students at Louisiana State University. The topic was AI. It was more discussion and conversation than lecture; no one in the room, including me, had any idea what’s really going to happen in the next five years. Note: the students are bright; I’m borrowing a few of their ideas here. 

As we talked about near term AI related work/life changes – self coding computers, legal contract reviews, push button financial analysis, big pharma type discoveries – I thought of the TV show A Gentleman in Moscow, portraying a fictional Count Rostov, imprisoned for life in a hotel after the Russian revolution. As an aristocrat, he is out of favor with the commissars; a modestly revolutionary poem he wrote earlier saved him from execution.  In his new world, nearly everything was turned upside down – culture, technology, learning, human relations. His choice: adapt or die.  

The students probably aren’t going to be threatened with life or death decisions as a result of AI (pessimists  might not agree). But how they work will change continuously.  Here’s an AI scenario coming to a company near you:

2026 – a day in the life of an internal auditor

Sarah, newly hired in the Internal Audit group of XYZ Casualty, tackles her first revenue recognition audit.  Fred, having done the audit last year, is her mentor.  As he starts to email her the audit program, she asks “Have you run that by ChatGPT5?”  To humor the newbie, he uploads it to a company firewalled version of ChatGPT for a second opinion.  Here’s what the AI knows: (1) every detail about the company’s ERP software (2) the latest revenue recognition audit techniques and (3) more than any human about insurance revenue accounting. It writes Python programs for analytics and runs them, suggests accounts most likely to have problems, and creates a draft of the report to management, based on both automated and human feedback. While Sarah gets a cup of coffee, the AI reviews every YouTube presentation ever made on GAAP for revenue recognition in the insurance industry just in case it missed something. The report includes graphics, tables, trends, and a polished executive summary.  Audit time decreases from 600 hours to 200 hours.  The Audit VP is pleased that Sarah took the initiative to implement “his” idea.  

2027 – a change in audit protocol

Load every audit program into ChatGPT5 (or 6); step 1 of each program becomes “replace everything here with what I’m about to enter.”  Proceed.  


Now, let’s time travel a century or so in the past:

1895 – Gee Whiz, look what I can do with this new electric motor!

If you don’t look too carefully, history repeats itself. In the late 19th century, the world began to be wired for electricity; engineers and business people found ways that electric motors could save money and improve efficiency. You could, for example, build a factory as a horizontal, spread out building. It was much more efficient than a multi-story plant that used belts connected to a steam engine. You could have long assembly lines and avoid going up and down stairs. All because of electric motors.  

So, motors became a thing. Articles in newspapers and magazines proliferated, suggesting clever new uses.  Engineers and factory owners had conferences. It was “hype” before the hype cycle.  And yet, it was the real deal.  

And now, as Ronald Reagan once said, “there you go again.” Everybody is talking about the cool things you can do with your AI tool. With the paid version of ChatGPT, you can upload your child’s stick figure drawing and ask it to write a bedtime story based on the picture. You can draw a crude flowchart with pencil and paper, upload it to the AI, and ask it to generate code (in your language of choice). And the code works.  How about creating videos, songs, poems, exercise routines, diplomatic emails … the list goes on. All this is for the current front runner, ChatGPT4, which is now as bad as it will ever get. 

Bottom line:  My dear Count Rostov, I feel your pain dude! Everything is changing, all the time. The revolution cannot be undone. Let’s enjoy the ride and hope for paradise on the other side.  

Thoughts anyone? Email me: wayarberry@gmail.com




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