<p>Has anyone here heard about Google Car ?
It's Google's fully automated car .
Some person from Google i think the CEO Schmidt said that it will be ready by 2017 .
A few industries it will drastically change are the truck driving , bus driving taxis etc ..
Human drivers will become redundant and the companies will just fire them and move to fully automatic fleets of trucks , buses , etc</p>
<p>Now as someone who is thinking about studying accounting or finance in a few years ( and add the 4 years of actual study ) is there a danger that the same thing will happen with accountants ? that a computer software will do al of the accounting instead of a human being ? In our lifetime I mean ... 10,20,30 years from now ?
And if so accounting is dangerous to study ...</p>
<p>Accounting is and will only ever be dangerous to study when perched upon a unicycle while juggling knives while evading the tiger that’s just been set upon you…</p>
<p>Less facetiously, considering the future utility of a major is pretty smart but I can reassure you. Accounting isn’t just about doing the accounts manually via spreadsheets or other software. It’s about advising, knowing the best solution for the business or person. An accountant can understand quirks and problems that humans encounter and why. And need accountants in order to tell the coders what to program, to check these program and to sort them out when they go wrong. </p>
<p>Taxis, cars and buses overtook the horse drawn carriage which overtook the horse and human powered carriages which in turn overtook plain old walking. Technology evolves but so do the opportunities that spring up around such change. </p>
<p>You also don’t have to ‘just’ become an accountant with that major. You can do any of the many general grad level jobs and careers- why not join the police? Or go and teach Kindergarten? You also bring a level of expertise to any business whether you’re actually doing the accounts or not. </p>
<p>Most jobs will change over a career due to shifts in management, working culture, technology, internationalisation/nationalisation, laws and economy amongst others. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the economy could collapse the day you graduate. Do something you’ll enjoy studying. If you don’t have a real interest in it beyond what you feel you ‘should’ study, it’ll be a long 4 years…</p>
<p>So not gonna happen ?
Interesting answer . You have a point theoretically but to be brutally honest , I don’t have what you would call a " calling " for any profession or a deep desire to study this or that .
I just want a good paying , stable job that isn’t math intensive , and that will allow me to live well ( beautiful house , new car , the occasional trip abroad , you know what I’m talking about )… Really nothing more . call it being superficial . And I understand that it is in a way . I would like to have a calling or desire for something but I just don’t have one at the moment , so it’s strictly just evaluating the benefits</p>
<p>Uhh, computer scientists thought we would have artificial intelligence comparable to a human around the 60s and 70s. It’s like 2013 and we barely can make a robot successfully fold shirts within a day.</p>
<p>I highly doubt anything notable will come around by 2020. We use a lot of statistics and machine learning, I assume, in finance now, but it’s still figured out by humans.</p>
<p>I don’t see how auditing can be automated. Also advances to technology have created opportunities for accounting. In every curriculum, students are required to take a class on accounting information systems and the major public accounting companies have technology consultants for that deal specifically with information systems.</p>