A blockchain revolution in Accountancy

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn BlockchainLeave a comment

Blockchain technology is heralded as the game changer in so many fields: banking, currency, logistics just being a few of them, but there is one service area that nobody has talked about so much and that is accounting.

Most people would agree that accountancy isn’t quite as ‘sexy’ as banking, hence the lack of excitement about how the blockchain may completely revolutionise a service industry that is centuries old. As much as we like to make jokes about accountants, their services are invaluable to businesses and to entrepreneurs.

History shows us that double-entry bookkeeping, the foundation of all accounting, can be traced back to medieval Jewish merchants in the Middle East, and later picked up by Genoese merchants in the 14th century. From there it became the standard method and it is relatively simple — for every intake of money in one account (credit), there must be an equivalent outflow in some other account (debit).

Overall, accountants focus on managing risk. It allowed businesses to keep track of a number of transactions at the same time, and in a range of currencies. Accountants have a specialist skill set, but as John Katsos argues, the blockchain could potentially make many in the profession unemployed.

In traditional accounting there is room for errors and fraud, as many famous cases have shown. When a mistake happens, more accountants have to be brought in to correct it, and that leaves rooms for more errors. Katsos claims that the blockchain is not double-entry bookkeeping; it is “potentially infinite bookkeeping.”

As he says, “blockchain technology can give every user in a system an automatically updated list (a “chain”) of all transactions (“blocks”) that have occurred within that system.” Plus it has validators: designated members of the system who come to “consensus” over a transaction. The only limitation is the number of users and the amount of computing power available.

There is also the potential to use permissioned blockchain to avoid fraud. In this system, people using the blockchain have been verified in advance and limits imposed on what they can do on the system, such as ‘read only’. Add in AI to detect fraud and we may have an even more robust accounting system. Is it the end of the accountancy profession? The answer is probably not, but there could be some big changes.

How to use AI in your business

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn AI, Big Data, Business, FintechLeave a comment

As a business owner you may have heard quite a bit about Artificial Intelligence and its benefits for business. However, you may not be aware that adding tools based on integrated machine learning, deep learning algorithms and other products is not as difficult as it sounds. Indeed, you may not even be aware that some of these are examples of AI.

Chatbots and virtual assistants

Have you visited a services website recently and had a box pop up offering to have a chat with you? Chatbots and virtual assistants are appearing on more and more websites. It isn’t difficult to find a chatbot service for you business and you can get a writer to provide you with a bespoke script that suits the tone and style of the rest of your website.

Online courses

It doesn’t have to cost you anything to get taught by the best. For example, Udacity offers a free Intro to AI course. Stanford University has a AI: Principles and Techniques course, and there are many others, including a Microsoft’s Cognitive Toolkit and MonkeyLearn’s ‘Gentle Guide to Machine Learning’.

Know what you want to do with AI

Once you’ve learnt the AI basics, it’s time to establish how AI can help your business. Think about how you can add AI capabilities to your existing products and services and look for ways n which AI can solve problems and add value.

Bring in the experts

Once you’ve identified some goals in your business where AI provides a valuable solution, it is probably time to organise consultations with AI experts. Setting up a pilot project that can be evaluated over a two to three months period, is one way to do it and bring in consultants to work with a small internal team. Once the pilot has been completed, you’ll be able to decide whether or not to take it forward for the long term.

Integrate AI in daily work routines

Once you have AI on board, make sure all workers have a tool to make AI part of their daily routine, rather than something that replaces it. AI scares some employees who feel threatened by it in the sense it might replace them, so it’s important to demonstrate that it is a help to them instead.

AI can really improve your chances of success and help teams to work more efficiently — so it’s time to get on board with the bots in business.

5 ways blockchain can save the environment

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Blockchain, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Blockchain technology is primarily associated with cryptocurrency, smart contracts, fintech and so on, but there are ways in which this new technology can solve environmental problems, and could potentially reverse climate change.

Blockchains they are particularly interesting for environmental causes, because they make it possible to track and verify transactions and interactions without a centralised authority. We can use this to increase transparency, accountability, and efficiency of environmental projects.

Here are five examples of how it could be used.

  1. Recycling

People are often not incentivised to participate in recycling. And, as most cities are responsible for their own recycling programmes, there is no way to compare their effectiveness. A recycling program on the blockchain could encourage participation by giving a financial reward in the form of a cryptographic token in exchange for depositing recyclables like plastic containers, cans, or bottles. These schemes already exist in some parts of Europe.

  1. Energy

Traditional power grids are centralised, which can create inefficiencies in energy distribution, like having unused surplus. A peer-to-peer blockchain based energy system would reduce the need to transmit electricity over long distances, and thus reduce loss and energy storage requirements. It could also encourage companies and people to get returns from investing in renewable energy.

  1. Environmental charities

It can be difficult to track how money donated to a charity is spent. Blockchain technology can ensure that money intended to be used as a reward for conservation, or a payment to a specific cause, does not disappear into the wrong places.

  1. Carbon footprint tax

Currently, the environmental impact of each product is difficult to determine, and its carbon footprint is not factored into the price. Consumers are given little price incentive to buy products with a low carbon footprint. A blockchain-based reputation system could give each company and product a score based on the carbon footprint of the products they sell.

  1. Consumer incentives

It can be difficult for individuals or companies to see the direct effects of their actions. Therefore, the incentives for acting in an environmentally sustainable way aren’t always clear, especially in the short term. Blockchain technology can be used to track data, such as carbon footprints and incentives created that encourage people and companies to act in a sustainable way through tokenised rewards for specific actions.

 

Quantum computers are almost here

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn FintechLeave a comment

A lot of people are very excited by the idea of quantum computers. There’s a theory that they are going to solve all the worst problems that the world faces, such as poverty. They are going to bring a revolution, yet as Dan Robitski writes at Hacker Noon, “we’re not really sure what a quantum computer will even look like, but boy are we excited.”

Now, the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the USA has plans to take what seems like a pipe dream and make them a reality in its research labs. It’s going to cost a lot of money, but the NSF doesn’t mind paying.

In August, the federal agency announced the Software-Tailored Architecture for Quantum co-design (STAQ) project in which a band of physicists, engineers, computer scientists and others from six universities, including MIT and Duke, will start a five-year project at a cost of $15 million. The aim is to build the world’s first practical quantum computer.

This quantum computer will go beyond proof-of-concept and will have to outperform the classical computer. What is the difference between the two? There are two key points here:

  • Classic computers use bits that are either 0 or 1, whereas a quantum computer uses qubits that can be both 0 and 1.
  • Qubits transfer information via quantum logic gates that route the qubits via photons and ions.

The problem facing the programme is that the researchers and scientists need to build a quantum computer that is actually practical, and this will require work on both hardware and software.

They will need to figure out how to make qubits less prone to error and how to streamline responses to our queries. It is likely that they will have to build automated tools that optimise the way algorithms are “mapped onto specific hardware in an effort to solve both these issues at the same time. Can they do it all in five years? They seem confident, then we will see just how revolutionary quantum computers are!

If you’re interested in quantum computers, you might enjoy reading this interview with Kenneth Brown of Duke University. He is the engineer in charge of the programme