Doug Sleeter was a well-known entrepreneur and thought leader in the accounting industry. He was the founder and former CEO of The Sleeter Group, a company that provided training, consulting, and research services to accounting professionals.
“Sadly, Doug Sleeter passed away in November 2019.” - ChatGPT 3.5, March 2023
Yup, ChatGPT says Doug Is Dead. The good news, he is very much alive and has a bone to pick with ChatGPT. This one is personal.
A Bit More About Doug Sleeter…
Doug Sleeter is the founder and former CEO of The Sleeter Group, an international network of accounting software consultants, and the former producer of SleeterCon, an annual conference for accounting professionals. As a CPA firm veteran and former Apple Computer Evangelist, he melded his two great passions accounting and technology to guide developers in the innovation of new products and to educate and lead accounting professionals who serve small businesses. He is currently focusing on digital currencies and blockchain technology. He was inducted into The CPA Practice Advisor Hall of Fame in the accounting profession, and named to Accounting Todays Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting, 20082015. Doug attended the University of California Santa Cruz and Santa Clara University, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Information Systems, and lives in Pleasanton, CA.
Use these show notes to follow along with the audio:
Segment one:
The AICPA was playing around with this new “AI thing” when they asked it, “Who is Doug Sleeter?” and discovered that ChatGPT was hallucinating (and had declared him dead).
The term, hallucination, is commonly used to describe incorrect information supplied by an AI tool such as ChatGPT.
“Hasn’t the internet always thrown a bunch of crap at us, including humans?” —Ron Baker on the hallucinations of ChatGPT
If you have a little bit of data wrong, that’s not a problem. In aggregate, lots of small issues become a bigger one. Then AI enters the stage and we are struggling to correct its hallucinations.
“You have to have some basic human discernment in order to create a prompt for [ChatGPT].” —Ed Kless
Segment two:
“We talked in the last segment about big bad data. These hallucinations from ChatGPT are creating more data that someone is going to record on a ledger somewhere. How can this be good?” —Doug Sleeter
It can pass the bar but ChatGPT has a problem with accounting tests. “ChatGPT is still no match for humans when it comes to accounting” https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/986867
The creation of an AI generated deepfake is not the problem but what about the reaction to it. Just as Doug had a reaction to being proclaimed deceased, our government is having a reaction to AI in general as well.
“AI apocalypticism is thinly veiled political fund-raising pitch” https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ai-apocalypticism-is-a-thinly-veiled-fund-raising-pitch/
Segment three:
The paper clip problem. What is it and why would AI be hell bent on destroying us to make more paperclips? https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/ai-and-paperclip-problem
Do you know about Isaac Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics? Written in 1941 in his short story runaround https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaround_(story)#:~:text=The%20plot%20revolves%20around%20the,conflict%20with%20the%20First%20Law.
We swerved into the philosophy lane today on the show: Human judgement, morality, and creativity were all significant factors when Sully landed his plane in the Hudson River. How would an AI system have acted?
On AI: “The contextual piece is critical and it is what makes us human.” —Doug Sleeter
Segment four:
This is GENIUS. Doug Sleeter has the ultimate test for AI. It’s better than the Turing test for sure. “Would my dog befriend an AI and consider it to be its master?”
“We do overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and overestimate it in the long term,” as summarized by Ron on today’s show.
A big THANK YOU to Doug Sleeter for joining us today. To all who were concerned about ChatGPT’s designation of him as deceased, do not fret. He is very much alive and ready to set the ChatGPT record straight.
Bonus Content is Available As Well
Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.
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