The Alan Turing Institute is hosting a workshop on AI in tax, audit and fintech today at the University of Surrey (schedule):
The use of digital technologies in tax and financial services has come a long way over the past decade, while little attention has been paid to how they empower and impact a diverse society. The workshop aims to match digital innovation in tax administration with principles and mechanisms to protect both users and the reliability of results. The workshop will bring together experts from tax administration, fintech, economic policy design, machine learning, AI, early career researchers and PhD students. The co-sponsors are It is co-hosted by Queen Mary University of London,
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- Panel #1: The Role of Digital Technology in Tax Administration
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- Panel #2: Principles and standards
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- Panel #3: Using AI to Advance Administration and Policy
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- Panel #4: Using AI to Advance Administration and Policy
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- Panel #5: The impact of AI tools on practice
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- Panel #6: Using AI to Advance Administration and Policy
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- Panel #7: Taxing AI and Cryptocurrencies
Michael Hatfield (University of Washington; Google Scholar ) presents Professionally Responsible Artificial Intelligence, 51 Ariz St. LJ 1057 (2019), today on Panel #5:
As artificial intelligence (AI) developers produce more and more applications for professional use, how will we determine when use is professionally responsible? One way to answer the question is to determine whether AI augments the intelligence of the professional or replaces it. To increase the intelligence of the professional would be to make it greater, that is to say, to increase and improve the expertise of the professional. But a professional who substitutes artificial intelligence for his own puts both the professional role and the client at risk. The problem is to develop guidance that encourages professionals to use AI when it can reliably improve expertise,
This article offers a solution, using tax professionals as a case study.
There are several reasons tax practitioners provide a good case study, including that tax practice has a long history of computerization and that AI is already being developed for tax practitioners. Tax professionals, including not only lawyers but also certified public accountants, are directly regulated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in addition to their regulation by professional bodies.
This article proposes public-private cooperation in regulating the use of AI by ex ante tax planning professionals. On the private side, panels of experts would test the reliability of new AI applications by running experiments. The panels would certify the AI products determined to be substantially robust and designed to educate and engage the professional. On the public side, the IRS would provide a presumptive defense to professional liability penalties against professionals who used certified AI. This should motivate tax planners to prefer the purchase of certified tax planning AI apps, and thus motivate tax AI app developers to seek certification.
While the proposal in this article is specific to the use of AI by tax professionals, it sheds light on the way forward for regulating the use of AI by other professions. The way would be for third parties such as government agencies, professional associations or malpractice insurers to drive demand for certified AI products for use by professionals. In general, these certifications should be provided to AI which increases the intelligence of the professional, increasing their professional competence. By keeping professionals involved in the certification process, space is opened up to shape the transformation that AI brings to professions,
