Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series. View all the articles in this series here: Articles by Tanya Hilts
In my first article in this series, I shared why having accounting professionals and small businesses represented in the global conversation around artificial intelligence (AI) matters to me. I also said I did not want to walk into Geneva assuming my own experience gave me the right to speak for an entire profession or small-business community.
Then came the preparation.
Anyone who knows me will understand that I was never going to read a couple of briefing notes, pack a notebook, and decide I was ready. I am very much an A-type personality. Once I understood the scope of the conversations taking place through AIFOD, I started digging, and I have continued doing that right up to the summit. I expect the research and learning will continue while I am here in Geneva as well.
The topics themselves are significant. Access to AI, ownership, infrastructure, sovereignty, data control, vendor dependency, small language models, environmental impact, security, and who ultimately gets to write the rules are all part of a much bigger discussion about where this technology is going and who gets to participate in shaping it.
AIFOD also held preparation calls leading up to Geneva, and I was able to participate in several of them. For me, those calls started at 7:00 a.m. on Saturdays, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how seriously I have taken this.
The calls gave us an opportunity to hear from speakers, but they also allowed us to talk through and debate the topics in a much less formal setting. I could hear perspectives from people approaching the same issue from different countries, industries, and experiences. That became part of my research, too.
Reading about AI sovereignty or concentrated infrastructure is one thing. Hearing people discuss what those issues mean in their own communities gives them a very different context. It also became clear fairly quickly that there would not always be agreement on the problem, never mind the solution.
The conversation has also continued to shift. Some of the topics we are discussing now were not necessarily being framed the same way even a few weeks ago. Questions around open-weight models, competitive advantage, access, and security have changed as new developments have occurred. Security concerns and other real-world issues are forcing people to react and reconsider positions in real time. That means the preparation cannot really stop.
We are not arriving with a set of talking points written months ago and pretending nothing has changed. The information is changing, the risks are changing, and in some cases the questions themselves are changing.
For someone who likes to be prepared, that has been an interesting lesson. Preparation in AI does not mean reaching a point where you know everything. It means understanding enough to recognize when the conversation has changed and being willing to change with it.
As I worked through the AIFOD topics, I found myself constantly translating these very large policy discussions back into the reality of a small business or accounting practice.
What does sovereignty mean to a five-person firm? It may mean being able to get your information out of a software platform if you decide to leave.
What does concentrated infrastructure mean to a small business? It may mean relying on technology controlled by a provider that can change the price, the terms, or the features your business has become dependent on.
What does AI governance look like when there is no legal department, technology team, or risk committee? For many small businesses, it is one person trying to make decisions about privacy, security, technology, and compliance while also dealing with clients, payroll, and keeping the business running.
Those questions are where this became very real for me.
The questionnaires I created for North American accounting professionals and small-business owners were built specifically around the topics we would be discussing through AIFOD.
I wanted to take these larger questions about access, control, affordability, ownership, privacy, and dependency and ask what they actually looked like on the ground.
Were businesses worried about the cost of AI? Did they understand where their information was going? Could they move their data if they wanted to change providers? How important was human review? Were they being given enough education before being encouraged to adopt AI? Did small businesses and accounting professionals believe they had enough influence over how these technologies were being developed?
More importantly, I wanted to test my own assumptions. I had opinions going into this process, some of them fairly strong. But if I am going to bring the experiences of small businesses and accounting professionals into these discussions, I need to know where their experiences support what I believe and where they do not.
I now have those responses. I will share the results later in this series because they deserve more than a few convenient statistics inserted into an article about preparation.
There is another part of this that is very personal for me. I have always connected with the idea behind the Serenity Prayer: accepting the things we cannot change, having the courage to change the things we can, and understanding the difference. The acceptance part can be difficult.
There are plenty of issues in the world I care deeply about but have very little ability to influence. I can have an opinion. I can be frustrated. I can talk about them. But that does not necessarily mean I can change them.
This feels different.
AI is going to have an enormous impact on small businesses and on the accounting profession. This is an area I understand. It connects directly to my client and industry work, to the people I serve, and to the future of a profession I have spent decades working in. And I have been given an opportunity to contribute.
That is ultimately why I decided to come to Geneva. This trip is at my own expense. I did not make that decision because attending an international summit sounded exciting or because I wanted to say I had been in the room. I made it because I believe this is one of those moments where I can actually make a difference, even if that difference is one question, one perspective, or one challenge that might otherwise have been missing.
I cannot control where artificial intelligence goes. But when I have an opportunity to influence how we get there, especially for small businesses and accounting professionals, I am going to use it.
My research will continue throughout the summit because the conversation is still moving. In the next article in this series, I will share what actually happened in Geneva, what I heard, what challenged me, and what surprised me once all of these discussions moved from preparation into the room.
For anyone who would like to follow the discussions more closely, I’ll be sharing daily updates from the AIFOD Geneva Summit at the United Nations, including what I’m hearing, what’s being debated, and what it could mean for small businesses and the accounting profession.
Sign up here to follow along: AI Geneva Summit Updates with Tanya