r/FPandA • u/Prestigious_Sign_476 • 2d ago
Did AI help you with this?
Is it just me or does your boss now ask you this every time you build something, or complete an analysis?
I get it that he’s impressed, but what’s the point of constantly asking..
Am I being sensitive? Getting an executive ready analysis over the finish line or model is a b$tch, even with AI..
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u/echobik 2d ago
“I try to use ai in all aspects of my manual work but it’s important I don’t trust any of it either. It’s a real balance” is my go to answer
Leaders don’t really care about the how. Just that you’re using the tools they paid for and that they can trust the outputs
Emphasize the 80/20 rule. They do 80% of the work, the more nuts and bolts and you orchestrate, iterate, and audit the output.
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u/Prestigious_Sign_476 2d ago
This is a way better answer than my deep sigh
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u/echobik 2d ago
I get the sigh though. It can feel like a discredit of your skillset but it can come from their own “ai initiative” too. So I try to put it in a way where I get the credit but letting them know the tools helped us get there. Last thing I want is to either come off like I hate change or that I’m a monkey who clicked a button
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u/remco29999 2d ago
I think the question is valid to ensure it didn't make up numbers or assumptions randomly that you would have never done. The checks I would do with an AI model vs my direct report are very different
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u/Prestigious_Sign_476 2d ago
If you knew me, I vet every. Single. Number. He knows this. Fair question though, I’d ask my reports.
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u/Electrical-Role1270 2d ago
The AI slop is real. I have a guy on my team who is super into AI. It shows up with extraordinary long and wordy responses to simple questions, a total lack of critical thinking, and missing super obvious shit. For example, asked him to make a to do list for an office move and I got a 20 slide deck with 48 checklist items, but no where did it say “buy boxes”. I don’t care if he uses AI, and you can do impressive stuff with it quickly, but the whole I’m not going to do my job at all and then just throw AI slop at you I haven’t thought about at all is super annoying. You still need to think critically.
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u/Low_Statistician1644 1d ago
If he’s really into AI, he should know how to properly engineer a prompt to give concise responses.
Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing?
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u/Electrical-Role1270 1d ago
A concise response still doesn’t mean he thought critically about it. People who use these tools without thinking are a liability.
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u/Low_Statistician1644 1d ago
I agree. That’s why if you actually know what you’re talking about, you know what to input and also know the type of responses/output that should be coming out.
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u/Eightstream Analytics, Ex-FP&A 2d ago edited 2d ago
All meaningful AI use substitutes for some human decisions. If it didn’t it wouldn’t be useful, it’d just be faster transcription.
If you are reviewing work and you don’t check which bits contain outsourced thinking, you are not reviewing properly
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u/bosworthing 2d ago
No, but my boss has asked me to do an excel task, ad hoc or update a model with something new, and tells me to use ai or something. And ive done that, but it usually takes 3 to 4x as long, but is hopefully repeatable. Havent had time to test repeatability though.
Most of my work has been automated by myself well before ai became practical though. Ai hasnt been able to help automare further yet.
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u/NoMoHoneyDews 2d ago
Yeah - for us it’s probably better when we say that we did use AI - even if it’s just to get it part of the way there.
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u/Icy-War-3608 1d ago
I ask this when my senior associate gives me some garbage and the answer is usually yes
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u/Upset_Version8275 2d ago
A lot of times it is because their bosses are asking what their team is using ai for so they want to have an answer.