Episode 23 - The Tax Pig

Welcome to episode #23 of Agents of AI, Capto’s podcast for leaders who want to understand how humans + AI agents are reshaping the future.
The "Tax Pig" joins us to share:

• Our guest works in the UK and across Europe for a tax technology company. They have been in tax technology for over 17 years and spent 10 years in the "big four", where they were always implementing tax technology, and later on, building technology.

• Their current role is focused on innovation, where they look at changing technologies, how they can plug gaps for customers, and applying new technology (traditionally with a heavy AI angle in the last few years) to understand customers' pain points and how they work.

• How they fell into the field of tax technology but fell in love with it quickly. They were initially put on an implementation tax technology project as an intern between their second and third year of university. They find the tax industry interesting because it is a big, complicated problem space with lots of applications for new technology.

• What is underappreciated about the tax role is the ability to translate complicated scenarios to make them understandable for people who know little to nothing about tax. They also believe that soft skills are important, especially as more traditional, manual "grunt work" like Excel spreadsheets disappears.

• Their first workplace efforts with AI included launching a production-grade Generative AI (GenAI) tool in February 2024 that is now used by about 100 customers, including three of the top 10 accounting firms in the UK. The guest had previously tried to solve this problem using traditional machine learning but could only achieve about 40-45% accuracy, whereas GPT-3 instantly achieved 92% and was tuned up to 95-96% accuracy. The guest noted that the accuracy threshold in the tax industry is incredibly high, and an 80% accurate product will not work.

• In the future, they foresee AI agents playing a role in tax review processes done by more senior people, like directors, partners, or heads of tax. The agents would serve up valuable information, for example, by looking at prior and current year tax returns, accounts, and third-party documents to flag areas that look "weird". The goal is not for the AI to provide the answer, but to target the reviewer's investigation to a small, prioritized list of things to check, rather than a list of a hundred items.

• Advice for peers and newcomers is not to fear AI but to "embrace it" and adapt to the "next generation and the way forward". The practical advice is to "get stuck in and dabble", start small by using tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to learn how to interact with AI, and to create prototypes quickly.

...and finally their identity is revealed as Russell Gammon, Chief Innovation Officer of Tax Systems: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rgammon/ 
Agents of AI features CFOs, other practitioners, technology leaders, and AI visionaries to share real wins, failures, and strategies, so teams everywhere can learn, adapt, and lead. You can also learn any time from the entire knowledge base of our guests via our "AI Twin". https://hey.speak-to.ai/agents-of-ai 
If you know a superhero and "Agent of AI" that should join our program, or you are one yourself! Comment, tag them, or reach out to Alexis Chevallot or Peter Steube on LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearecapto