I think it would be absolutely insane to hand over a serious-sized company's books to an LLM.
As a small consultancy though, looking forward to my next filing, and having just moved to a new and better-specced jurisdiction, I'm sorely tempted to outsource to Claude.
I've had mixed experience with accountants in the past. No horror stories, but I often feel I'm not getting everything laid out clearly, and that I don't fully understand the process.
I've got plenty of reasons to dislike LLMs in my own work, but when dealing with well-scoped but professionally gatekept things like tax or property transactions, they're an absolute godsend.
I love them! It's a really nice, fun way to explore a corpus. Cosmograph for this sort of thing is great, it supports graphs as well as 2D projections, and is blazing fast.
That said, I've never had a client or stakeholder show any interest in using one, beyond an initial "that's cool".
And UMAP etc., is just as much an art as a science. You'll go mad trying to get the perfect layout.
Great toy if you're into that sort of thing, but yeah, fiddly and overwhelming for most.
I'm not sure about these new dumb phones. Just not having social media in the first place has worked alright for me.
I hate my phone, and my relationship with it, but sometimes you just need to use one.
My preferred strategy is having a normal phone, minimal apps, and just keeping it switched off most of the time, particularly round the house.
Thing is, I've got a worse problem with my laptop and desk. Between HN, lichess, and a handful of favoured blogs, I can easily blow a day doing nothing, without the help of a phone.
Honestly, I think something deeper than a different form factor is required. If anyone has found it, let me know.
Just moved back to the UK after many years away, and it's creepy here. Doing the elderly under terror legislation, some crazy kangaroo court antics, a frankly sinister approach to "online safety". VPNs?
The even more concerning thing is that we've got a far right party that have been leading in the polls for most of the last year.
As a small consultancy though, looking forward to my next filing, and having just moved to a new and better-specced jurisdiction, I'm sorely tempted to outsource to Claude.
I've had mixed experience with accountants in the past. No horror stories, but I often feel I'm not getting everything laid out clearly, and that I don't fully understand the process.
I've got plenty of reasons to dislike LLMs in my own work, but when dealing with well-scoped but professionally gatekept things like tax or property transactions, they're an absolute godsend.