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Will AI Agents Join Our Teams Soon?
Also: Big Week in AI —News You Can’t Miss
Anna Tiomina
December 10, 2024
Every week, we explore how AI is reshaping the financial landscape, offering actionable insights to help you navigate these changes with confidence. This edition dives into a future that’s closer than it seems—leading hybrid teams of humans and AI agents. While the prospect might sound futuristic, the foundations are already here.
Are you ready to lead in a world where humans and AI work side by side?
Free Webinar: How to Streamline Your Year-End Closing with AI
As the holiday season approaches, year-end closing is top of mind for many finance professionals. Before we celebrate, I’m hosting a free webinar on how AI can simplify and streamline your year-end closing.
This will be more of a live discussion than a formal presentation. I want to hear your challenges, questions, and ideas. Everyone’s invited to join, so feel free to send me your questions in advance!
📅 Date: December 17th
🕒 Time: 11 am US Central time
📍 Location: via Zoom (Registration Link)
Join the AI Finance Club—Subscriber-Exclusive 50% Discount
If you’ve been thinking about joining the AI Finance Club, now is the perfect time! As a special offer for my subscribers, you can get 50% off your membership using this link.
The AI Finance Club is a fantastic resource for professionals eager to leverage AI in finance. It offers:
Learning paths for beginners to advanced users.
Regular webinars and articles on trending topics (including contributions from me—I have one live now and another in the works!).
A vibrant Slack community with regular industry updates and discussions.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to stay ahead in the AI-driven future of finance.
The Balanced View: How to Manage Mixed Teams of Humans and AI Agents
Over the past year, I’ve observed how rapidly AI has penetrated our workflows, shifting from an intriguing possibility to an indispensable tool.
For some, the idea of executives managing hybrid teams of humans and AI agents may seem like a distant reality. But to me, it feels like it’s just around the corner. AI agents are already transforming how we work, and finance leaders must prepare for the profound changes they will bring—not only to workflows but also to the nature of leadership itself.
What is an AI Agent, and Why Are They the Buzz?
AI agents are software systems designed to autonomously perform tasks based on specific goals or instructions. Unlike static automation tools, they can learn, adapt, and improve over time, handling complex workflows with remarkable precision. In essence, they’re like digital junior analysts—efficient, reliable, and endlessly scalable.
The buzz around AI agents isn’t just hype; it’s a reflection of their transformative potential. In finance, they’re already making waves by streamlining forecasting, financial reporting, and fraud detection. Their ability to learn and adapt ensures they improve with use, making them indispensable for data-intensive tasks. The better they get, the more they redefine what’s possible in finance operations.
Finance Tasks on the Verge of AI Takeover
Certain finance tasks are particularly well-suited for delegation to AI agents. These include:
Reconciliation Tasks: Matching transactions, invoices, and payments with near-perfect accuracy.
Financial Reporting: Preparing first drafts of reports, complete with narratives and visualizations.
Basic FP&A Tasks: Act-vs-forecast comparisons and other foundational financial analyses.
Expense Reporting and Categorization: Automatically sorting and flagging anomalies in expense data.
Compliance Monitoring: Identifying regulatory risks and ensuring adherence to financial guidelines.
These tasks share common traits: they’re repetitive, data-heavy, and require consistency—areas where AI agents excel.
How the Role of Finance Executives Will Evolve
The rise of AI agents will reshape the role of finance executives, moving them from traditional management tasks to overseeing hybrid teams of humans and AI. This transformation will require leaders to adopt new approaches and mindsets.
1. From Hiring to Auditing
Managing AI agents is fundamentally different from managing people. There will be less mentoring and coaching, but regular feedback will still matter. Leaders must shift their focus toward validating outputs and auditing AI processes to ensure accuracy and ethical compliance.
New Responsibility: Train AI agents on high-quality, unbiased data and audit their results.
Challenge: While human management decreases, auditing complex AI systems becomes a critical and time-intensive task.
2. Introducing New Roles in the Team
With AI agents automating repetitive tasks, the focus will shift to roles that complement AI, such as analysts who can interpret AI outputs and bridge technical and strategic gaps.
New Roles: AI Auditors, AI Analysts, and hybrid professionals who combine technical expertise with financial acumen.
Challenge: Talent with these skills is scarce, so cross-training and creative talent development strategies will be needed.
3. Maintaining Oversight and Accountability
AI agents require human oversight, particularly at critical decision points. Leaders will need to design workflows that incorporate checks and balances.
New Responsibility: Identify key points where human intervention ensures accuracy and ethical compliance.
Challenge: AI often processes vast datasets, making it difficult to audit every decision without robust controls.
4. Continuous Learning and Adaptation
The rapid evolution of AI tools means finance leaders must constantly upskill themselves and their teams to stay competitive.
New Responsibility: Invest in ongoing education to keep pace with AI developments.
Challenge: Finding time for continuous learning despite day-to-day demands.
Practical Strategies for Managing Mixed Teams
To navigate this new landscape, finance executives can adopt these strategies:
Embrace AI as a Team Member: Treat AI agents as collaborators, not competitors. Involve your team in deciding which processes to automate and emphasize how AI enhances, rather than replaces, their contributions.
Build Transparent Processes: Create workflows where AI outputs are validated by humans. Document key decisions, data sources, and assumptions to maintain accountability and clarity.
Foster a Culture of Adaptability: Help your team see change as an opportunity. Offer training and create a safe space for employees to experiment with AI tools.
Focus on Strategic Oversight: Shift your energy toward interpreting AI insights, refining decision-making processes, and aligning AI use with business goals.
What Will Stay Important?
Even as AI transforms workflows, some aspects of leadership will remain vital:
Interpersonal Relationships: AI can’t navigate office politics or interpersonal dynamics. With potentially smaller human teams, leaders should double down on building trust and long-lasting relationships with their employees.
Strategic Vision: Humans will still be needed to see the big picture and connect the dots in ways AI cannot.
Coaching and Leadership: Teams will undergo significant transformations, and strong leaders will guide them through these changes, ensuring they feel valued and supported.
How Close Is This Future?
As I was writing this article, I couldn’t help but wonder how futuristic—or relevant—this might feel to you. Over the past year, I’ve met finance professionals who already live in the future, working seamlessly with AI tools like ChatGPT or predictive analytics. But I’ve also spoken with others who are tied to legacy systems, convinced that meaningful change is at least a decade away.
Both views make sense. Change doesn’t happen overnight and unevenly across industries and teams. But I’ve noticed something: even those who take small steps toward adopting AI—like automating a single repetitive task—often see a shift in how they approach their work.
So, whether you feel AI is years away or knocking on your door, there’s room to start preparing. Small actions today can help you and your team adapt. From what I’ve seen, the future is arriving faster than most expect.
AI News of the Week
Meta’s latest generative AI release, Llama 3.3 70B, promises cutting-edge performance at a fraction of the cost of its predecessors. Leveraging advanced post-training techniques, this model offers the capabilities of Meta’s previous Llama 3.1 405B model while reducing the computational overhead. This means access to more powerful AI tools without breaking the budget—a significant development for teams looking to integrate scalable AI into their workflows.
Why it matters: Efficient AI models like Llama 3.3 can make high-level capabilities more accessible to finance teams, empowering them to automate data-heavy tasks like reconciliation or forecasting without overburdening IT infrastructure or budgets. This is a step closer to democratizing AI in enterprise environments.
OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Pro plan offers professionals unlimited access to its most advanced models, including OpenAI o1, o1-mini, and GPT-4o. With a $200 monthly subscription, users can leverage compute-intensive features designed to solve complex, research-grade problems. For finance executives and analysts, this opens doors to deeper insights, faster processing of financial models, and enhanced decision-making support.
Why it matters: For finance teams working on high-stakes analysis or intricate forecasting models, the ability to "think harder" with AI tools could lead to breakthroughs in productivity and precision.
Microsoft has rolled out a preview of its Copilot Vision feature, which allows AI to browse the web alongside users. This tool not only helps summarize and discuss content but also interacts with certain websites, offering recommendations and insights. For finance professionals, this could streamline tasks like market research, competitive analysis, and even supplier negotiations.
Why it matters: This is another step toward fully functional AI agents capable of collaborating with humans on complex tasks. Imagine conducting a supplier negotiation or researching a competitor while having an AI partner synthesize the key points for you. The potential use cases are vast, and Copilot Vision shows how AI is evolving to become an active participant in our daily workflows.
Closing Thoughts
As the holiday season approaches, finance professionals are busy. December and January often bring year-end closing activities, deadlines, and the rush to wrap everything up before the new year. My hope is that by next year, many of us will have AI agents on our teams—not to replace us but to take on the mundane tasks that eat up so much of our time.
Imagine a holiday season where reconciling transactions or drafting reports is handled seamlessly by AI, giving us more time to enjoy the festivities with our loved ones. Here’s to a future where technology doesn’t just make us more efficient but also gives us back the moments that truly matter.
Wishing you a productive December and a joyful holiday season ahead!
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Until next Tuesday, keep balancing!
Anna Tiomina
AI-Powered CFO