Although the tech market is dominated by the US and China there are plenty of opportunities for UK firms to develop in niche areas, including AI, as it becomes ever more influential in our work, how we interact and learn.
In my daughter’s virtual class the teacher reminded her Year 7 pupils of the necessity of the ‘mute’ button, as it was better not to let her know how hard Alexa is working on the maths questions she has just set them.
It’s becoming ever more difficult to know what is real and not real in the digital world, with cloud robots on the horizon we will become more and more immersed in technology and with the aim of AI to mimic humans including how we interact with each other, it is becoming even harder to distinguish a bot from a person.
We are all familiar with being asked if you're a robot, thanks to Google's reCAPTCHA API, which is used across the web to verify whether site visitors are bots or humans.
However, what many people are not aware of is that each time they complete a security check to get access to the website, we are unwittingly training Google's AI datasets. Although I mostly struggle to pick out traffic lights, bicycles and shop fronts, and fail in what seems like a ‘simple’ task and am pleased if I get it right at the first attempt, it all helps to train datasets to be used to improve AI in areas such as autonomous vehicle. The ethics of our free labour is a question for another day.
In saying that, Google are quite transparent about this and admit that our actions help to build machine learning, improving hard to solve AI problems and, whether we want to or not our free labour, certainly assist them in what would be an arduous task of developing better AI technology. We know that driverless vehicles are already being used in controlled environments and in the future will be part of smart cities and eventually on our roads, so in some way we have all contributed to such developments.
As a professional service firm providing accounting and corporate financial services, we already utilise automated systems, with most current systems using existing datasets to provide automated reporting. The outputs can be produced quickly and in a chosen presentational format and accounting, audit, valuations and data rooms are areas where technology is being applied, and there are a number of systems to choose from.
With data increasing daily and the ability to store and process data becoming faster, the opportunity to obtain more insightful information will be driven by AI. This will provide even greater granularity and validation. AI can provide predictive analytics of comparative data, identifying demand trends and improving business forecasting that can improve business decisions and support negotiations on transactions. As these tools become more developed they will become more integrated into our services and influence the way we complete audits and transactions.
From a cloud accounting perspective UHY can advise you as to the appropriate bolt-ons available on the various finance packages available and help you develop a package that works specifically for your needs.
We can support you whether your business is large or small, at the beginning of its lifecycle or considering strategic options; we have the technology professionals that understand a changing and challenging environment.
If your company is innovating in AI technology, contact UHY for advice on MBO, Exit Strategy, IPO, R&D tax credits, funding and general business advisory.
The next step
For further advice please contact Rob Starr or visit our tech page for further information on how we can help.
