2025 Future Gazing

Welcome to 2025!

For fun, let’s start the year with some bold speculation and boundary-pushing, “out-there” future gazing.

For over a decade, noted future-of-employment academics Frey and Osborne, first in 2013 P.72 and again in 2017, predicted job losses in tax due to computerization.

They predicted that, for tax preparers, the probability of job losses stood at 99%—among the highest of any job category in any sector. For other jobs, such as tax examiners, collectors, revenue agents, accountants, and auditors, probabilities hovered at about 95%. According to their findings, related jobs such as management, business, and finance, which are generalist tasks requiring social intelligence, are less impacted.

Nevertheless, framing results this way meant Frey and Osborne were accused of scaremongering. Our Smart Tax Technology & Transformation certification program argues that their work predicts the degree of change better than it does job losses. For example, changing job descriptions does not necessarily mean job losses, and the continued robust market for tax professionals, including relatively new roles in tax technology and transformation, supports this view.

But what about AI? Will the impact of AI be different than that of previous technologies?

Indeed, since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) and LLMs (large language models) have become ubiquitous, and they’re not scaring anyone yet.

In fact, the opposite is true. People have found ways to use these tools to enhance their personal creativity and productivity and enjoy the experience! Despite market hype, the same applies to AI add-ins to tax technology tools; the impact so far is incremental rather than fundamental. More far-reaching efforts are underway, but they remain embryonic, have yet to prove themselves, and have yet to hit the mainstream.

Even so, AI has the potential to be the most impactful technology ever, and not just for tax (due to the data and information-driven nature of our work in tax, we are particularly susceptible).

So, check this out!

On 6 January 2025, the AI Report (I recommend every tax professional interested in AI subscribe to this excellent free report) revealed that Microsoft will invest $80bn in AI infrastructure before July 2025, and Microsoft and OpenAI were considering building a data center to power an AI supercomputer—called Stargate—at a cost of around $100bn.

The same edition quotes Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI (the creator of ChatGPT): “[we] know how to build Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)”—as they have traditionally defined it—and they are now turning their attention to developing “superintelligence!”

OpenAI defines AGI as “autonomous systems that outperform humans at economically valuable work,” although recently, Microsoft (OpenAI’s biggest investor) defined it as “AI that can generate $100bn.” Superintelligence goes beyond even that.

Altman believes that “Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn, massively increase abundance and prosperity.” And, although he has previously warned that its impact could be “more intense than many anticipate,” he has predicted that “superintelligence could arrive within a ‘few thousand days’.”

Despite the glorious future that superintelligence could bring, OpenAI has grave concerns about how to transition into a world with superintelligent systems and safely steer or control these advanced AI systems, stopping them from going rogue: “Humans will not be able to reliably supervise AI systems much smarter than us, and so our current alignment techniques will not scale to superintelligence.”

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OK, back on planet earth …

Technology-based predictions are notoriously inaccurate, and no one should act—or even think—fundamentally differently based on these extrapolations. Treat this as a “watching” brief for now, but know that when the inevitable inflection point comes, it comes quickly (who can remember the time before widespread smartphones?).

Moreover, it doesn’t stretch the imagination to see how the OECD’s Tax Administration 3.0’s vision of reaching into the “natural systems used by taxpayers in their daily lives and businesses” to allow “the automation and upstreaming of many aspects of tax administration” might come to fruition in the future. However, it is less easy to see how advanced AI might control—rather than just contribute to—the people-oriented, value-based, and social aspects of tax where trust and accountability are key factors.

Our view is that human autonomy will persist in the face of advancing technology (in the event of the alternative, all bets are off!), but it remains a choice. Just as Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, says, “Manage your phone; don’t let it manage you,” so tax professionals must choose. Our mission for 2025 is to provide the means to navigate that choice.

Perhaps Seth Mattison, renowned thought leader on talent management and high-performing cultures, said it best when he asked, “How do you prepare for a world that you do not recognize?” We suggest an open mind, positive attitude, and willingness to learn, collaborate, and do the work are the basis for handling whatever the future holds.

Until next time …