The Robots Are Coming for Your Job: Accountants Edition

No job is safe from the robots, and not just because jobs won’t matter when they’ve wiped humanity off the face of the Earth. Jobs face the much more immediate threat of being taken away by machines who do them better (and for less money) than humans. Manufacturing jobs are no stranger to this phenomenon, but as AI becomes more advanced, robots are gearing up to take jobs once thought safe—in this case, accounting.

That’s thanks to startup Smacc, which automates the task of accounting through AI. The company just completed a funding round and secured $3.5 million, which their robot overlords are sure to allocate perfectly and efficiently in order to take more jobs away from human beings. As TechCrunch reports, founders Uli Erxleben, Janosch Novak, and Stefan Korsch came up with the idea for their new venture upon noticing through experience that accounting was the most difficult part of starting a business.

Whether or not you want to trust accounting software designed by people who think accounting is especially hard is up to you. Businesses that opt to use Smacc’s software submit their receipts, and the system turns them into machine-readable format and uses the data as it tracks invoices, sales, and costs. Thought it’s far from the first accounting software out there, Smacc’s intended benefit is an increased level of automation (read: less need for organic meatbag assistance/jobs).

The accounting industry isn’t the only one facing this existential crisis, either. I mean, I’m probably a robot writing this for you right now—except that I’m not. … What? You can trust me, and also the robots, who just want to help and allow us to fulfill our Wall-E destiny with universal basic income. (The robots are reading this and taking search data back to Google. We can’t talk openly here.)

(image via Anthony Easton on Flickr)

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Dan Van Winkle

Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.

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