Intelligent Auditors Use Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Special thanks to our featured speaker, Marcus Garrett, for contributing this valuable article on auditors using AI. Yellowbook-CPE.com greatly appreciates Marcus for allowing us to publish it. 

Here’s the good news. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not take your job. Here’s the bad news. People who know how to use Artificial Intelligence might take your job. This is the simplest explanation I’ve heard about how artificial intelligence will change the lives of auditors who refuse to adapt. In this post, I’ll share how AI has already reduced the workforce and how you can prepare to be one of the last auditors standing.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

First, what is Artificial Intelligence?

There are many definitions. For the purposes of this blog, we will imagine that artificial intelligence is the use of computer technology to replace work that would normally necessitate another human. In this way, artificial intelligence may be considered augmented intelligence–allowing one auditor to perform the work of many.

If you’re skeptical, then you’re a good auditor. Unfortunately for you, I don’t need to be hypothetical because I already have real examples from my own life about how artificial intelligence is replacing real people in the workforce.

Before Artificial Intelligence

When I began creating continuing professional education videos, I worked with an entire team of experts. It was rare a video could make it to the light of day without the help of at least five, college-degree-educated, six-figure-earning individuals.

In addition to my team of auditors or subject matter experts, I would then need to employ a copywriter, video editor, video producer, or graphic artist to make a viral video. 

After working with all these really smart and talented people, I would need a website or software to host the video, like YouTube. 

How times have changed!

After AI: Why internal auditors should care about artificial intelligence

How is Artificial Intelligence already changing the workforce?

Today, I use AI to replace most, if not all, of those really smart, expensive people from my team.

Using a one-sentence prompt in ChatGPT alone, AI will produce high-quality content better and faster than my team of five individuals ever accomplished. With many AI software, like Facebook (yes, Facebook), I can even access all of this information for free. In addition to saving myself thousands of team hours, I’ve now saved my company tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in FTE, contractor, and consultant salary.

For instance, I am already using AI to draft scripts. No need to hire a copywriter.

Did you know AI software already exists that will create human characters, called “Avatars” to read those AI-generated scripts for you? There goes the need to hire a team of auditors, actors, voice actors, or subject matter experts!

With software like InVideo, I can license pre-recorded scenes. Or, I can use AI prompts to create scenes that exist nowhere else in the world until produced by my request. There goes the need to hire a graphic artist, video editor, or video producer!

Finally, I have another choice. 

I can pay a website to host my video. To save even more money, I can choose to host the video completely free on sites like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. 

For those of you keeping score at home, in the last five paragraphs, Artificial Intelligence just replaced five to ten full-time jobs! 

Where AI ends & internal audit begins

Artificial Intelligence is impressive today. Today is the worst AI you will ever see.

AI is one of few technologies that advances every hour. When you finish this blog, AI will know more than when you started. By the time you wake up tomorrow, it will be able to do even more with that information. By the end of this week, it will make better content, pictures, and videos, and it is always improving.

However, I don’t think this is the time for internal audit to panic. Where some may see despair and unemployment, I see opportunity. Even before AI, the only constant was change. Today’s change might be happening faster, but I believe auditors are able to quickly adapt. I believe this because when I first started auditing, a mentor gave me some great advice. Auditors, they said, are charged with “speaking truth to power.”

The future of Artificial Intelligence & internal audit

In conclusion, Artificial Intelligence blurs the lines between reality and truth. As our clients decipher whether they have risks or whether they are simply the victims of attackers in their mother’s basements with too much AI on their hands. According to my mentor, this is the opportunity auditors have been waiting for!

Yes, the world is changing and reality is stranger than fiction. Auditors can secure their roles by simply remaining the same. We follow the data, verify the facts, tell the truth, and provide objective assurance.

As artificial intelligence advances, internal audit can provide a roadmap for our companies and our clients to follow. After all, in a world clouded by doubt who better than a profession driven by fact to guide the way? In other words, in a world overrun by artificial intelligence, it is the intelligent auditor who may remain the last profession standing.

Want to learn more about AI and audits?

Then you’re in the right place! Join Marcus for one or both of his upcoming CPE sessions:

• The Intelligent Auditor: How AI Helps Create Viral-Ready Audit Findings. In this two-hour webinar on January 23, Marcus covers how to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to refine audit report writing, improve search engine optimization and build a variety of social media friendly content from the audit products you already create.
• GAGAS Auditing with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Marcus kicks off the Tech Fest for Government Auditors on February 5 with this exciting one-hour session that will change how you perform audits using cutting-edge AI technology.