{"id":54,"date":"2024-02-20T21:39:02","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T21:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/?p=54"},"modified":"2024-02-20T21:39:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T21:39:03","slug":"magic-eight-ball-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/magic-eight-ball-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Magic Eight Ball Says . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artificial intelligence is quickly transforming the global economy, promising increased efficiency and productivity at the same time as it threatens millions of jobs. Of course, someday AI might decide it\u2019s smarter than the species that created it (not a high bar) and use it to\u00a0wipe out<\/a>\u00a0human life. (But who cares if we\u2019re all making money now, amirite?)

Plenty of lawyers are already working with AI\u2019s most famous tool, ChatGPT. This is a “multimodal large language model” that looks like what might happen if Google\u2019s autofill feature got bitten by a radioactive spider. Some of those early adopters have discovered it can be an unreliable partner. Just ask Michael Cohen, Donald Trump\u2019s former “fixer,” who used Google\u2019s version of the same technology to cite fake cases to a judge late last year. (We\u2019re still waiting on his ruling, but he probably won\u2019t be impressed.) Yet that hasn\u2019t stopped startups like Callidus, Spellbook, and Casetext from rolling out AI-based legal assistants to help lawyers practice more effectively. (Insert obligatory joke about why they call it “practicing.”)

Naturally, tax professionals hoping to rescue wasted dollars for their clients for are hoping to harness AI\u2019s power, too. A startup company called Blue J has introduced two services for tax pros eager to hop on the AI bandwagon. Their diagramming tool helps planners create helpful illustrations for transactions like mergers and acquisitions, corporate spinoffs, and the like. And they\u2019re more exciting “Ask Blue J” chatbot promises “research with confidence” to help planners research caselaw, clarify understanding, and expedite drafting.

Ask Blue J is already attracting attention for predicting Tax Court results, especially with one thorny employment tax question: whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. It may not be as entertaining as calling Super Bowl winners, or how much airtime Taylor Swift gets during the big game. But who wouldn\u2019t want to know how the Court will rule? Revenue Ruling 87-41 lays out a\u00a020<\/em>-factor test for the IRS to use to make that call. (Lawyers\u00a0love<\/em>\u00a020-factor tests \u2013 billing endless hours to parse all those contingencies is why they can afford BMWs.) So, Ask Blue J has a “worker classification” module specifically dedicated to answering that question, using a database of cases dating back to 1927. They report their tool is 97% effective, which can eliminate a lot of expensive uncertainty and guesswork.

What happens when someone decides to harness this superpower for evil, though? One math-minded Instagram user posted an intriguing assertion: “The IRS audits just .2% of tax returns. That gives you a 99.8% chance of successful tax fraud. The expected value is too good to ignore.”

Of course, the IRS is boarding the AI train too, starting by using it to police large partnerships managing hedge funds, private equity, real estate, and law firms. But\u00a0someone<\/em>\u00a0had to be the first to use a horseless carriage to flee a bank robbery.\u00a0Someone<\/em>\u00a0had to be the first “cocaine cowboy” to fly drugs for some south-of-the-border cartel.\u00a0Someone<\/em>\u00a0had to be the first hacker to use a computer to steal millions online. And so, inevitably,\u00a0someone<\/em>\u00a0will be the first miscreant to use AI specifically to cheat the IRS or cover their tracks. Odds are good that it\u2019s already happened, and we just don\u2019t know about it.

The postmodern philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “It\u2019s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” But we can tell you, with >97% certainty, that you\u2019ll pay less tax with\u00a0planning<\/em>\u00a0than you will without. So let us put AI to work to help save you big time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tax professionals hoping to rescue wasted dollars for their clients for are hoping to harness AI\u2019s power. A startup company called Blue J has introduced two services for tax pros eager to hop on the AI bandwagon. Their diagramming tool helps planners create helpful illustrations for transactions like mergers and acquisitions, corporate spinoffs, and the like. And they\u2019re more exciting “Ask Blue J” chatbot promises “research with confidence” to help planners research caselaw, clarify understanding, and expedite drafting. But Yogi Berra once said, “It\u2019s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3],"tags":[25,26,4,10,11,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-54","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"category-taxes","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-tax","12":"tag-tax-reduction","13":"tag-tax-savings","14":"tag-tax-strategy","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bourbonnaistax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}