#i also totally do not understand financial systems here its so weird and scary

[sodrippy]

looking up banks and is it common to go into a bank branch or need to speak to people at your bank up here? or is it common everywhere and im just not doing that ?? theres five million people complaining about the customer service at a particular bank and im like. why are you in there often enough for that to influence whether youll open an account w them though

[withasmoothroundstone]

How hard is it for people to both not fear death AND not fear disability?

Things I’d love to see:  People honestly working to remove people’s fear of death and anything connected with it, without veering hard into deadly levels of ableism.

Like... I’m one of the least afraid of death people I know, even among disabled people.  And people with complex medical issues tend to generate larger numbers of people who don’t fear death just through sheer exposure.  I’ve written -- a lot -- about how I see death, and how accepting it as part of life has been vital to anything approaching happiness.  Especially since, at least after my health nosedived ten years ago but before the causes were diagnosed and treated, I really didn’t expect to live past 35 or so and neither did some of my doctors.  

And by really didn’t expect to live, I mean I woke up in the middle of the night most nights so weak that I couldn’t lift my head off my chest, move my arms around at all, and discovering the only reason I was breathing was because I was hooked to a bipap that had a central apnea mechanism that also served to aid breathing in cases of extreme weakness or other respiratory issues(1).  Add to that my body failing on me in assorted random ways, and I was more prepared for my possible death than anyone else in my life was.  

I don’t think this is that uncommon an experience for a disabled person.  Like, some disabled people and people with life-threatening conditions are terrified of death no matter what happens.  But for a lot of us, sheer proximity leads to familiarity and a lack -- or reduction, at least -- of fear.

But.  This is where everything veers way the hell off course in many people’s heads.

The fact that we don’t fear death doesn’t mean we want to die.

The fact that we don’t fear death doesn’t mean that we think death is preferable to life with our current, or future, disabilities.  And if we do think that, sometimes it has nothing to do with our disability at all, but people are very willing to speculate that it does, because, they think, they would certainly rather die than be us or face the futures we face.

And that shit?

That shit kills us.

So this isn’t some kind of trivial side preference I can overlook when overwhelmingly, people who promote a lack of fear of death do so in a way has connections -- sometimes more extreme than others -- to a fear of disability.

And disabled people who want to be alive are presumed to fear death.  Because why the hell else would we want feeding tubes, breathing machines, and all the other assorted equipment that they assume it’s better to be dead than live with.

I’ve directly encountered this mentality when trying to get medical care.  When I needed feeding tubes(2) I had people trying to tell me not to get them.  It was so bad that it took people calling the hospital (yes, tumblr saved my life, scary as that is to say -- and a serious thank you to everyone who called, that had to benefit not just me but other disabled people at that hospital) to get them to knock it off and give me the tube.  They weren’t telling me I didn’t need it.  They were telling me I’d be better off without it.  When my DPA inquired directly as to what they meant by this, one doctor confirmed that they saw going home and dying as preferable to living with a feeding tube.  And that’s not an unusual viewpoint among medical professionals.  I wanted the tube, they admitted I needed the tube, I was quite vocal in asking for the tube (which they’d wanted to put in and I’d resisted about six months prior) but they were resisting the tube because some of them didn’t care if I lived or died (or even possibly wanted me dead because out of the way and easier) and some of them cared but had seriously misplaced values.

And the irony is that a lot of ableism is based in a fear of death.  People equate death and disability, or see disability as a partial (or, sometimes, full, believe it or not) death.  People see disability as a sign that their bodies are fallible, and therefore mortal, and people afraid of their own mortality are often terrified of disability.  Some such people convince themselves that only people who “don't take care of themselves” becoming disabled or ill, because they want so badly to believe they are in total control of their physical fate.  So an intense fear of disability is often rooted in an intense fear of dying.

Anyway -- the connection between ableism and fear of death makes it especially unpleasant that very few people are working to simultaneously make people less afraid of their own mortality and less afraid of disability.  Even though the two ought to go hand in hand.

I understand why many disabled people are unwilling to publicly confront cultural or personal fears about mortality.  It’s incredibly common for disabled people to be pressured to die, and to be told that the only possible reason for us to live with certain medical issues is that we must be horribly afraid of dying.  It’s also incredibly common for people who want their culture to confront fear of dying, to (whether they intend to or not) explicitly play to people’s fears of becoming disabled.  Like, “Are you sure you’re afraid of death?  What if you ended up like this person?  Wouldn’t you want to die rather than that?”  And that’s life-threatening to disabled people.  And no matter how much death is a good thing in the scheme of things (and I believe it is), it’s incredibly fucked up to say that one group of people have an obligation to die, or that it’s better to be dead than to be that one group of people, or anything even remotely along those lines.  Because death may not in and of itself be a terrible thing, but forcing someone to die before their time is beyond horrific.  That’s why our species generally has rules against murder.  And a lot of the time there’s some dangerous, creepy-ass stuff for sick and disabled people lurking behind some people’s encouragement to accept or even embrace death.

I also understand, though, why it’s important to accept death.  And I can’t make myself sweep that under the rug just because so many people who talk about it push agendas that are toxic to disabled people’s survival.  I think accepting death -- truly and on all levels -- leads to a greater acceptance of disability, and vice versa.  

So it’s weird to me that pretty much everyone talks about one without the other, and makes them mutually exclusive.  When it’s more like the two ought to enhance each other.  Losing your fear of death will generally lead to less fear of disability.  Losing your fear of disability will generally lead to less fear of death.  If you handle them on a deeper level than most people seem willing to go.

And damn it I wish more of us would go there.

Like, look death in the face, look disability in the face, and not view either one as the enemy.  Figure out why it is that so many disabled people who aren’t afraid to die are willing to live with respirators and feeding tubes and intractable pain.  Figure all this out before people play on these fears even more as aid to disabled people is slashed all over America.  And if you seriously think there are never financial motives behind promoting a “better dead than disabled” mentality, you’re not paying close enough attention to what’s going on.

Also -- on a purely self-centered note -- I’d love if more people were writing about things like this so I wouldn’t have to sit here trying to find ways to explain and put things into words that I’ve never seen fully explained or put into words before.  Because this post is incredibly incomplete -- it’s got gaping holes everywhere where things are unsaid because I can’t figure out how to say them -- and I can’t fill in the blanks entirely by myself.  

And yes, I know other people must be talking about it because my observations have to be incredibly far from unique or groundbreaking.  But I don’t know where this is happening.  Most people seem to take one of these things at the expense of the other -- and either one has potentially deadly consequences for disabled people.  (And yes, that’s bad, even if death in and of itself is not.)  Our ethics really don’t have to be as paint--by-numbers as people seem to want to make them.  And these things are vitally important now more than ever.

[/grumpy stick]

(1) They even used it to stabilize me before sending me to the ICU last year.  As in -- from what I’m told, I don’t remember any of this -- the respiratory team set up my bipap, from home, to treat respiratory failure from severe alkalosis, in the emergency room. Because it already had a setting to automatically force breathing if it stops, and I wasn’t really grasping what breathing was or that I was supposed to be doing it.  And I pretty much had to wear it day and night throughout a big chunk of the ICU stay too.

(2) A G-tube used for drainage to prevent gastroparesis-related aspiration pneumonia, and a J-tube to allow me to get enough food into my system to not be starving every day even on a liquid diet.  So initially I had a GJ tube in a single stoma and now I have separate G-tube and J-tube each with its own stoma, both MIC-KEY buttons, for anyone curious.

[ashleydpalmerusa]

Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Wait, no, wrong intro. Uh, as far back as I can remember, the Chicken Littles of accounting have been carrying on about the inevitability of robots taking jobs from honest, red-blooded professionals. You know, like they did at automobile assembly lines, supermarket checkout lanes, and women’s nether regions. Why bother paying a bunch of workers when you can invest in a robot to do their job? Robots don’t complain, they don’t call in sick, they don’t care if you work them too hard, and they don’t say “not tonight, dear, I have a headache.” Really, it’s a wonder we haven’t let them take over yet.

In the time people have been worrying their pretty little heads over the robots coming for accounting jobs, AI has definitely gotten smarter. Technology is a wonderful thing — case in point, I haven’t touched a dirty light switch in my apartment for months, not since I procured a pair of sassy Alexas to do it for me — and the possibilities for the profession are certainly nothing to be afraid of. The only ones who really need to worry about automation are clients, that is if we ever get to the point where AI can process mounds of data to the extent that auditors will be able to offer more than just reasonable assurance that the client’s shit is in order.

Although this conversation about muh jobs has been happening for quite some time, most days it feels like the robot revolution we were promised is a long way off. I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

We’ve shared robots scare pieces from just about every accounting and accounting-adjacent publication out there over the years, but now it’s my pleasure to share one from my own back yard. FYI, there’s nothing really new here.

From Virginia Business:

“The accountant of today is going to be different from the accountant of tomorrow — and far, far different from the accountant of yesterday,” says J.K. Aier, an associate professor and area chair of accounting at George Mason University. “Things are changing as we’re trying to understand it. … It’s very difficult to predict what an accountant will be doing 10 years from today.”

What’s scary is not the robots themselves but the fact that the profession is figuring this stuff out on the fly. Far be it from capital markets servants to be ahead of the curve and mold the technology to fit them. Nah, they’ll keep freaking out for a few years, begrudgingly adapt the tech that is forced upon them, and then wait for the next scary thing to hit them in the face like a pie on a weird Mexican game show.

Global accounting firms such as Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse­Coopers and KPMG already use machine-learning software to handle some auditing tasks that entry-level employees typically handled, such as reviewing lease contracts.

These firms also are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in proprietary artificial intelligence technologies that will be used in the 2020s, says Gary Thomson, Richmond-based regional managing partner for Dixon Hughes Goodman, the largest accounting firm in the South.

Newsflash: “the 2020s” start eight months from now. This isn’t some distant Black Mirror bullshit, this is here and now and already happening at the Big 4 level, which means it’s only a matter of time before it trickles all the way down, and next thing you know Mort Friedman, CPA is shuttering up his one-man strip mall tax firm because technology can do his clients’ taxes in a tenth of the time for a quarter as much.*

Because of these trends, a national professional association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), announced in October that it’s developing an AI-based auditing platform, Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS), which will be available to all of its 14,000-plus member firms. Funded with $50 million from AICPA members, the DAS initiative aims to level the playing field so that AI technology won’t be out of reach for small firms.

Y’all know shit is getting serious when the AICPA throws some money at the problem. They believe the technology will give America’s 15,000 audit firms access to tools that will eliminate sampling altogether, meaning no transaction goes untouched.

“You’re going to determine things that you weren’t able to determine in audits that weren’t leveraging these platforms,” he says. “The modern audit is going to allow the auditor to tell the client that they’ve looked at the full data set … [and] found such things as double-billing errors, payments that weren’t being done correctly … and they’ll basically be giving the client much more assurance around the integrity of their data.”

Well shit, no wonder the profession is freaking out about this. You really think audit firms want to be responsible for every single item in a client’s financials? When the next financial crisis hits and banks start failing in, let’s say 2045, will regulatory agencies hold the robots accountable for fucking this up? Alexa can’t even manage my grocery list correctly, how the hell will AI successfully manage mountains of financial data?

So yeah, the robots are still coming, and yeah, it will probably put a few accountants out of a job, but at the end of the day, if nothing else, warm bodies will still be needed to make sure they don’t screw everything up and burn our financial system to ash. It’s basically the same as sex toys; sure a good one is superior to a dude in a lot of ways, but it’s not like women aren’t still dating and getting married and putting up with men despite having superior technology to get the job done right there in their nightstand drawer. So stop freaking out, you dildo.

*I totally pulled those figures out of my ass, I have no idea what robot Mort is gonna look like or be able to do.

The post Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News https://goingconcern.com/artificial-intelligence-will-replace-accountants-soon/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=artificial-intelligence-will-replace-accountants-soon

[lisarprahl]

Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Wait, no, wrong intro. Uh, as far back as I can remember, the Chicken Littles of accounting have been carrying on about the inevitability of robots taking jobs from honest, red-blooded professionals. You know, like they did at automobile assembly lines, supermarket checkout lanes, and women’s nether regions. Why bother paying a bunch of workers when you can invest in a robot to do their job? Robots don’t complain, they don’t call in sick, they don’t care if you work them too hard, and they don’t say “not tonight, dear, I have a headache.” Really, it’s a wonder we haven’t let them take over yet.

In the time people have been worrying their pretty little heads over the robots coming for accounting jobs, AI has definitely gotten smarter. Technology is a wonderful thing — case in point, I haven’t touched a dirty light switch in my apartment for months, not since I procured a pair of sassy Alexas to do it for me — and the possibilities for the profession are certainly nothing to be afraid of. The only ones who really need to worry about automation are clients, that is if we ever get to the point where AI can process mounds of data to the extent that auditors will be able to offer more than just reasonable assurance that the client’s shit is in order.

Although this conversation about muh jobs has been happening for quite some time, most days it feels like the robot revolution we were promised is a long way off. I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

We’ve shared robots scare pieces from just about every accounting and accounting-adjacent publication out there over the years, but now it’s my pleasure to share one from my own back yard. FYI, there’s nothing really new here.

From Virginia Business:

“The accountant of today is going to be different from the accountant of tomorrow — and far, far different from the accountant of yesterday,” says J.K. Aier, an associate professor and area chair of accounting at George Mason University. “Things are changing as we’re trying to understand it. … It’s very difficult to predict what an accountant will be doing 10 years from today.”

What’s scary is not the robots themselves but the fact that the profession is figuring this stuff out on the fly. Far be it from capital markets servants to be ahead of the curve and mold the technology to fit them. Nah, they’ll keep freaking out for a few years, begrudgingly adapt the tech that is forced upon them, and then wait for the next scary thing to hit them in the face like a pie on a weird Mexican game show.

Global accounting firms such as Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse­Coopers and KPMG already use machine-learning software to handle some auditing tasks that entry-level employees typically handled, such as reviewing lease contracts.

These firms also are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in proprietary artificial intelligence technologies that will be used in the 2020s, says Gary Thomson, Richmond-based regional managing partner for Dixon Hughes Goodman, the largest accounting firm in the South.

Newsflash: “the 2020s” start eight months from now. This isn’t some distant Black Mirror bullshit, this is here and now and already happening at the Big 4 level, which means it’s only a matter of time before it trickles all the way down, and next thing you know Mort Friedman, CPA is shuttering up his one-man strip mall tax firm because technology can do his clients’ taxes in a tenth of the time for a quarter as much.*

Because of these trends, a national professional association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), announced in October that it’s developing an AI-based auditing platform, Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS), which will be available to all of its 14,000-plus member firms. Funded with $50 million from AICPA members, the DAS initiative aims to level the playing field so that AI technology won’t be out of reach for small firms.

Y’all know shit is getting serious when the AICPA throws some money at the problem. They believe the technology will give America’s 15,000 audit firms access to tools that will eliminate sampling altogether, meaning no transaction goes untouched.

“You’re going to determine things that you weren’t able to determine in audits that weren’t leveraging these platforms,” he says. “The modern audit is going to allow the auditor to tell the client that they’ve looked at the full data set … [and] found such things as double-billing errors, payments that weren’t being done correctly … and they’ll basically be giving the client much more assurance around the integrity of their data.”

Well shit, no wonder the profession is freaking out about this. You really think audit firms want to be responsible for every single item in a client’s financials? When the next financial crisis hits and banks start failing in, let’s say 2045, will regulatory agencies hold the robots accountable for fucking this up? Alexa can’t even manage my grocery list correctly, how the hell will AI successfully manage mountains of financial data?

So yeah, the robots are still coming, and yeah, it will probably put a few accountants out of a job, but at the end of the day, if nothing else, warm bodies will still be needed to make sure they don’t screw everything up and burn our financial system to ash. It’s basically the same as sex toys; sure a good one is superior to a dude in a lot of ways, but it’s not like women aren’t still dating and getting married and putting up with men despite having superior technology to get the job done right there in their nightstand drawer. So stop freaking out, you dildo.

*I totally pulled those figures out of my ass, I have no idea what robot Mort is gonna look like or be able to do.

The post Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News https://goingconcern.com/artificial-intelligence-will-replace-accountants-soon/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=artificial-intelligence-will-replace-accountants-soon

[charlesjening]

Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Wait, no, wrong intro. Uh, as far back as I can remember, the Chicken Littles of accounting have been carrying on about the inevitability of robots taking jobs from honest, red-blooded professionals. You know, like they did at automobile assembly lines, supermarket checkout lanes, and women’s nether regions. Why bother paying a bunch of workers when you can invest in a robot to do their job? Robots don’t complain, they don’t call in sick, they don’t care if you work them too hard, and they don’t say “not tonight, dear, I have a headache.” Really, it’s a wonder we haven’t let them take over yet.

In the time people have been worrying their pretty little heads over the robots coming for accounting jobs, AI has definitely gotten smarter. Technology is a wonderful thing — case in point, I haven’t touched a dirty light switch in my apartment for months, not since I procured a pair of sassy Alexas to do it for me — and the possibilities for the profession are certainly nothing to be afraid of. The only ones who really need to worry about automation are clients, that is if we ever get to the point where AI can process mounds of data to the extent that auditors will be able to offer more than just reasonable assurance that the client’s shit is in order.

Although this conversation about muh jobs has been happening for quite some time, most days it feels like the robot revolution we were promised is a long way off. I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

We’ve shared robots scare pieces from just about every accounting and accounting-adjacent publication out there over the years, but now it’s my pleasure to share one from my own back yard. FYI, there’s nothing really new here.

From Virginia Business:

“The accountant of today is going to be different from the accountant of tomorrow — and far, far different from the accountant of yesterday,” says J.K. Aier, an associate professor and area chair of accounting at George Mason University. “Things are changing as we’re trying to understand it. … It’s very difficult to predict what an accountant will be doing 10 years from today.”

What’s scary is not the robots themselves but the fact that the profession is figuring this stuff out on the fly. Far be it from capital markets servants to be ahead of the curve and mold the technology to fit them. Nah, they’ll keep freaking out for a few years, begrudgingly adapt the tech that is forced upon them, and then wait for the next scary thing to hit them in the face like a pie on a weird Mexican game show.

Global accounting firms such as Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse­Coopers and KPMG already use machine-learning software to handle some auditing tasks that entry-level employees typically handled, such as reviewing lease contracts.

These firms also are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in proprietary artificial intelligence technologies that will be used in the 2020s, says Gary Thomson, Richmond-based regional managing partner for Dixon Hughes Goodman, the largest accounting firm in the South.

Newsflash: “the 2020s” start eight months from now. This isn’t some distant Black Mirror bullshit, this is here and now and already happening at the Big 4 level, which means it’s only a matter of time before it trickles all the way down, and next thing you know Mort Friedman, CPA is shuttering up his one-man strip mall tax firm because technology can do his clients’ taxes in a tenth of the time for a quarter as much.*

Because of these trends, a national professional association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), announced in October that it’s developing an AI-based auditing platform, Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS), which will be available to all of its 14,000-plus member firms. Funded with $50 million from AICPA members, the DAS initiative aims to level the playing field so that AI technology won’t be out of reach for small firms.

Y’all know shit is getting serious when the AICPA throws some money at the problem. They believe the technology will give America’s 15,000 audit firms access to tools that will eliminate sampling altogether, meaning no transaction goes untouched.

“You’re going to determine things that you weren’t able to determine in audits that weren’t leveraging these platforms,” he says. “The modern audit is going to allow the auditor to tell the client that they’ve looked at the full data set … [and] found such things as double-billing errors, payments that weren’t being done correctly … and they’ll basically be giving the client much more assurance around the integrity of their data.”

Well shit, no wonder the profession is freaking out about this. You really think audit firms want to be responsible for every single item in a client’s financials? When the next financial crisis hits and banks start failing in, let’s say 2045, will regulatory agencies hold the robots accountable for fucking this up? Alexa can’t even manage my grocery list correctly, how the hell will AI successfully manage mountains of financial data?

So yeah, the robots are still coming, and yeah, it will probably put a few accountants out of a job, but at the end of the day, if nothing else, warm bodies will still be needed to make sure they don’t screw everything up and burn our financial system to ash. It’s basically the same as sex toys; sure a good one is superior to a dude in a lot of ways, but it’s not like women aren’t still dating and getting married and putting up with men despite having superior technology to get the job done right there in their nightstand drawer. So stop freaking out, you dildo.

*I totally pulled those figures out of my ass, I have no idea what robot Mort is gonna look like or be able to do.

The post Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job appeared first on Going Concern.

republished from Going Concern