AI is reshaping finance through machine learning, natural language processing, and robotic automation. The speaker shows how tools like Gemini scan documents, Tesla's Optimus handles data entry, and LifeFlow automates bank reconciliation. Firms adopting these tools gain a competitive edge while those clinging to manual processes fall behind.
Chapters
This week we're going to talk about understanding artificial intelligence and the applications in the world of finance, basically. So let's face it, artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. I can remember reading and watching movies on this stuff, and it, it seemed like so far away, and it's here. So we do have to realize that it's a transformative force that's reshaping industries worldwide. Including the finance industry, and we're kind of in the forefront like we always are in all technology. We're always in the forefront. And AI is a suite of technologies that empower machines to mimic human intelligence. So it's working like a brain would work. It's no longer just spitting back information that's there. It's actually reasoning things out, which is really crazy to think about. So when you think about machine learning, it's learning from what you put in. One great example I can think of is I can use AI to write a blog post, maybe the blog post that's attached to this video. Now I can ask it to write me an email, for example, and I can say, write me an email, and it always spits out the email. I hope you're doing well. And I even get— sometimes I get some emails like that from random people in my, my inbox, and I think, well, that was written by ChatGPT, because it always starts every single message, I hope you're well, or I hope you're doing well. You can tell your AI, don't ever use that term again. Don't use the word Delve. There's certain terms that it just keeps regurgitating that you, you're teaching it. You're giving that, that opportunity to learn. And if you listen to last week's video, it will— it kind of went into what you really need to do to be secure and safe with your product, but how you can really Start to teach it. Let it learn from your information. Tell it what you want it to learn. Tell it who it is. Give it a role. Let it know, uh, it's a technology that's gonna use your algorithm. So know that. And I have a friend that we have a lot of fun with our algorithms and we try to mess each other's algorithms up. But it, you know, it learns from what it sees you doing. You've ever been on Google and you see that sidebar and it's all things that you maybe seems like you were just thinking about or maybe you said out loud and all of a sudden all those ads show up that are really targeted towards tells you. Well, that's the machine learning what your likes and dislikes are. It's the same thing when you're teaching or training your, your AI model. Now it's starting to use more natural language too. So it's important that a lot of these, a lot of these things are gonna start to work and interpret language just as we speak. So what's really cool about natural language processing, it can be a lifesaver. It can really take the time to scan a bunch of documents. Think of your Google Drive, for example. How— who here that's watching this video doesn't have a messy Google Drive with documents all over. It can actually scan and look and read for these things, which is what Gemini is starting to do for you, uh, in Google. And it can tell you where things are, and it will search in a deeper level than it never did before. That you, you have spent hours looking for things sometimes. And certainly I always blame myself because I didn't put it in a nice little neat folder. Sometimes it's like putting things in your house. You think you're putting it in a good place, you just don't remember where you stuck it because it made sense at the time. But this automation that you have with learning, it's time that's saving for you because you're not spending the time searching for things. That's the bump. That's the, that's the benefit that's gonna help you streamline workflows and boost productivity inside of your own firm. So the next thing we have to think about, and this is the kind of cool stuff that's down the road, but I think it's really gonna be fascinating. And I've looked at Optimus, the robot that Tesla's making, and it's fascinating to me that how this robot is starting to happen. And I think Elon Musk was saying that it's gonna be you know, 2026, we're always— we're gonna have all these robots in our house. I don't know if it's gonna be that quick. He tends to be very optimistic in his mindset thoughts, but they're like $30,000, and it can make your coffee, it can do your laundry, it can do a lot of the tasks that we do today, which is really fascinating to me, really cool. Also kind of scary. Is that gonna turn into us being a lazy industry? But there are robots already there. They work at Amazon. They pack boxes. They do things like that. I've seen it on, on a couple of TV shows where these robots are actually doing the manual jobs that nobody else wants to do. So they can do repetitive tasks, rule-based tasks. They can, they're perfect for data entry. They're perfect for account reconciliation. We work with a firm now that actually does have that AI system built in and it's super cool that we have this system. It's new, but you teach it, you teach it what works. and we're teaching it what works for law firms. We're helping train the model to know how to handle certain transactions, and it's going to free up our staff to do a higher level. I always look at it, it's not going to take our jobs away. It's just going to bump our staff up to do something more in their brain that maybe right now AI doesn't do. So it might actually handle, you know, reconciling that could take hours. It could probably go through all the transactions and figure it out. And that's the future. That's what we're going to be seeing down the road. And we're not talking 5 years here, folks. We're I'm talking like soon you're going to start to see this happening. Just go into your bank account. You now see that your bank statements are inside of QuickBooks. The bank balance is put in for you inside of QuickBooks. That's the little steps. That's the start of self-reconciliation inside a system. And who doesn't want to give that task up? I do. I know I do. I don't want to do it. Every time I have to help or do a reconciliation, I'm like, oh, I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. Well, AI is going to handle that for us and it'll figure it out, which is really amazing. We have it now with our, um, with our system, with LifeFlow, the software LifeFlow, we have it where we've implemented a form that actually brings that 3-way bank reconciliation in by connecting the software, pulling the data in from the separate places to have this line up and make a beautiful, beautiful, proper trust 3-way bank reconciliation. And you guys can sign up and get that too with, with LifeFlow. And it's just a time saver. I'm not having to go into Google Sheet and copy and paste and align the columns and the boxes. It's all preset for you. So artificial intelligence might seem like a buzzword in finance, like, meh, you're probably not going to hear about it too much anymore, but it is definitely something you're going to have to implement in your workflow. It's going to be part of your toolkit in redefining the industry and our operations that we do day to day. It's going to change. Our jobs are going to change. Machine learning is going to uncover hidden insights that we never thought of before. So these are the things that are gonna start to happen. And we're gonna see that if you're that firm that's looking forward and embracing AI, it's gonna make you seem like the most smartest bookkeeping firm or accounting firm out there, because you're using the system that's far ahead of a lot of other people. And I still see firms when I work with clients. I still see people that are in QuickBooks Desktop. They're still doing things manually. They're using other products that are really outdated, that are, that are segmented, and, and they're over here on the side. They don't connect to the finance product, they don't work, connect to your GL, your QuickBooks, your Xero, whatever. That— those days you should be looking— if your workflow looks like that, time to start to step forward into the future so that you're able to continue and really be intelligent with your future and set yourself up for success. So I hope this is helpful. And until next week, we'll see you then. Bye now. Bye.
