The Intergalactic
Space Chronicle
TECH
There's No Accounting for Ai
By Arno Freedman
It’s late in the afternoon and a cool but pleasant breeze blows in from the ocean. Two months ago was my 90th birthday, and I finally managed to retire after a long if not so illustrious career as a mining industry accountant.
When I started out accountants were actually expected to be experts on things like accounting standards and the tax code, but over the years, the few of us who managed to stick around, became not much more than glorified AI babysitters.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter about it. Progress is what it is, and with regulation software constantly optimizing the rules and standards, it was only reasonable that their (the government’s and accounting bureaus’) software would communicate directly with our software.
At first, we loved the AI. It made our jobs so much more intuitive and easy, but after a few years, there were fewer career opportunities for accountants. I was one of the lucky ones, because early in my career I chose to also study software development.
Accounting became less about strategy and expertise and more about catching those rare times where the software would go off the deep end. In those times, we would have to plug the leak, in a process that was less like writing software and more like navigating an elaborate maze of decisions and routines made outside the limits of human imagination.
Look, I can’t complain. It was certainly interesting at times. I even got to visit the outer asteroid belts twice to see the mines for myself. How many humans have been out that far (and back!) The far reaches of the solar system were indescribably beautiful, serene, and humbling.
What can I say, the software kept getting better and better, and in the end, we mostly found ourselves passing the time and playing office politics. I wasn’t really ever sure why the HR software kept us around. It was almost as if it did so for its own amusement, watching us like some daytime soap opera (if you didn’t get the reference, don’t sweat it. I’m VERY old!)
Anyway, so here I am, ninety years old and feeling happy and youthful down by the beach. I put on my favorite red swimsuit and head for the ocean. I wear a snorkeling mask and fins and swim straight out.
The water is warm and inviting. Beneath me the reef is teeming with colorful fish, sea urchins, and other ocean flora and fauna. I flinch for a moment as a huge whale shark swims by, but then I relax and just let myself blend in.
After losing myself for what seems like hours, I am starting to feel hungry. Where should I go for dinner tonight – maybe a sidewalk café in Paris with someone special? Yes, that sounds perfect!
“Computer. End program.”
