Titie: Is artificial intelligence improving the audit process?

Abstract: How does artificial intelligence (AI) impact audit quality and efficiency? We explore this question by leveraging a unique dataset of more than 310,000 detailed individual resumes for the 36 largest audit firms to identify audit firms’ employment of AI workers. We provide a first look into the AI workforce within the auditing sector. AI workers tend to be male and relatively young and hold mostly but not exclusively technical degrees. Importantly, AI is a centralized function within the firm, with workers concentrating in a handful of teams and geographic locations. Our results show that investing in AI helps improve audit quality, reduces fees, and ultimately displaces human auditors, although the effect on labor takes several years to materialize. Specifically, a one-standard-deviation change in recent AI investments is associated with a 5.0% reduction in the likelihood of an audit restatement, a 0.9% drop in audit fees, and a reduction in the number of accounting employees that reaches 3.6% after three years and 7.1% after four years. Our empirical analyses are supported by in-depth interviews with 17 audit partners representing the eight largest U.S. public accounting firms, which show that (1) AI is developed centrally; (2) AI is widely used in audit; and (3) the primary goal for using AI in audit is improved quality, followed by efficiency

#### 研究動機(jī)

人工智能給公司給來很大沖擊和改變，但已有研究關(guān)于人工智能是否提升公司生產(chǎn)力結(jié)論并不一致。一方面由于難以準(zhǔn)確測度公司層面的人工智能應(yīng)用程度，另一方面因?yàn)槿斯ぶ悄艿挠绊懣赡芗性谔囟ㄐ袠I(yè)中，總體上影響較小或?yàn)榱?。本文聚焦于審?jì)行業(yè)能夠有助于緩解這兩個問題。

#### 研究問題

人工智能對審計(jì)質(zhì)量與效率的影響？

#### 研究假說

**Prediction 1:** AI improves audit quality.??

**Prediction 2:** AI improves audit efficiency, lowering the cost of the audit product.??

**Prediction 3:** AI reduces the audit workforce, especially the entry-level employees

#### 變量度量

人工智能：利用員工簡歷，通過其工作履歷，確定某一時間段就職于某某公司；進(jìn)一步通過相關(guān)的工作描述確定其是否為AI員工

#### 研究設(shè)計(jì)

#### 基本結(jié)果

1.人工智能提升了審計(jì)質(zhì)量（降低了財(cái)務(wù)重述的概率）??

2.人工智能降低了審計(jì)收費(fèi)??

3.人工智能替代了部分勞動力工作

While our primary focus is on audit quality, we test two additional hypotheses related to audit process efficiency: that AI helps reduce the costs of the audit product, and that AI helps decrease the reliance of the audit process on human labor. While our results about increased efficiency are more preliminary than our main findings on audit quality, they provide an important complementary perspective to the quality angle.