On the 17th of June 2019, Chartered Accountants Worldwide hosted an event in Dubai discussing ‘The Future of Trust: new technology meets old-fashioned values’.

The event was attended by the CEOs of the memeber institutes from Chartered Accountants Worldwide, along with invited guests of senior business and finance professionals and the discussion was moderated by Dubai-based business journalist and presenter Richard Dean.

The hour-long discussion tackled themes like the impact of artificial intelligence (A.I.) on the accountancy profession. A few highlights included;

• David Haveron, an expert in A.I. with PwC said ‘there is “an immense opportunity” at a global and at a regional level, to start understanding how A.I. is going to be used in businesses to help us make better decisions.’ He discussed how algorithms are increasingly more prominent with each day  and the key to “bridging the gapof trust” is for developers to ensure transparency. This can be achieved by making A.I. systems better at explaining their reasoning using natural language.
• SAICA Chief Executive Freeman Nomvalo discussed the threat A.I. brings to poorer parts of the world saying, “The challenge is that it displaces employment, and for a growing economy that has faced poverty over the years, that becomes an important issue for policymakers to respond to.”
• Sabbir Ahmed, Member Council at the Institute of Chartered Accountants Bangladesh, said “Machines cannot drive change – they will give you the prediction but it’s the human being that will drive the change. One area where A.I. needs to match with is EI: emotional intelligence. Human beings cannot be replaced by machines. That human element and human empathy is core to trust,” when discussing the importance of human decision making and relationships for business.

Ahead of the event, Big Top Multimedia worked with local suppliers to brief them in the planning stages and also worked on media in the post production stages. This helped Chartered Accountants Worldwide to generate social media content following the event.

As Michael Izza said in closing the discussion, the accountancy profession has a lot to think about.

To read more about the event click here.