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Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

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Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#21

Post by nerdsniper »

kstrauser wrote: post #17
crowcroft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a very common misconception among programmers that the law is a sort of natural language 'program' where you can consistently deduce that x input generate y output.

It sort of is, except that the entire law isn't defined in one place. "Hey, do I have a home office?" Well, "home" is defined over in this regulation, and "home office" is defined over there in that other regulation, and "having a home office" would normally mean this except for this case law that says it can also mean that when these other circumstances apply, and... These things are knowable, but unless you've spen…

> except that the entire law isn't defined in one place

> These things are knowable

There are absolutely undefined, unknowable areas of law that are waiting on future SCOTUS decisions to be defined.

Heck, we can’t even rely on past SCOTUS decisions.

Even in extremely well-defined law like whether LEO’s have valid PC to search someone during a traffic stop, two different judges in the same district will disagree and appeals courts / state supreme courts can rule quite inconsistently.

That’s by definition not just undefined behavior but also non-deterministic results.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#22

Post by Loughla »

jimbob45 wrote: post #10
jcranmer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, taxes is just filling out a spreadsheet and doing basic math... but the hard part of taxes is understanding how to fill out that spreadsheet correctly. Doing that requires answering several questions that many tax filers may simply not have the background to understand--I'm always struck whenever answering the question about "do you need to correct your W-2?" is how would I know when the answer is "yes."…

Nah, Free Fillable Forms paired with ChatGPT (free, not even plus) is adequate for the vast majority of the tax population now and none of it is hard. I expect that 2027 is the last year for the tax preparation software companies to still exist.

There have been free alternatives for years.

People still pay accountants to do their very basic taxes and pay $200 for twenty minutes worth of work.

Why?

For the same reason paid software exists in this space - knowing you have someone else to blame.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#23

Post by hsuduebc2 »

thrwaway55 wrote: post #19
mactavish88 wrote: post #3

The absolute last thing I want in the filing of my taxes is non-determinism.

Why? What's wrong with some non determism if Intuit foots any mistakes? I am all for AI auto filling taxes where the filer offering takes the burden.

To be honest I'm kinda sceptical that they will be paying fines for you.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#24

Post by dtnewman »

1) this article doesn't really cite that this is due to AI. It cites a reuters article which in turn cites an internal memo, which says that they need to be focused, with AI being an important initiative. So the title is a bit misleading.

2) A lot of comments here talking about turbotax. Remember that intuit also has quickbooks. Personally, i think the uses for AI in doing my taxes are limited. I don't want AI making judgement calls. However, for something like quickbooks, I can imagine many uses for AI. For example, categorizing expenses, organizing receipts, noticing odd patterns, etc.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#25

Post by kstrauser »

nerdsniper wrote: post #21
kstrauser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of is, except that the entire law isn't defined in one place. "Hey, do I have a home office?" Well, "home" is defined over in this regulation, and "home office" is defined over there in that other regulation, and "having a home office" would normally mean this except for this case law that says it can also mean that when these other circumstances apply, and... These things are knowable, but unless you've spen…

> except that the entire law isn't defined in one place > These things are knowable There are absolutely undefined, unknowable areas of law that are waiting on future SCOTUS decisions to be defined. Heck, we can’t even rely on past SCOTUS decisions. Even in extremely well-defined law like whether LEO’s have valid PC to search someone during a traffic stop, two different judges in the same district will disagree and a…

I agree. I just mean, you can pretty well know today's state, at least hypothetically. But you better be watching tomorrow's legal news to see if anything important changed.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#26

Post by VariousPrograms »

mactavish88 wrote: post #3

The absolute last thing I want in the filing of my taxes is non-determinism.

I asked an LLM (Gemini) about a calculated field in my taxes that was wrong but I couldn’t figure out why and every time it tried to tell me something like “It’s a common glitch for tax software to calculate like this.”

When I did figure out what was wrong and asked if that made sense, it told me I was absolutely right though.

I think people are lucky the IRS fired all their employees this day and age so this work isn’t getting checked as much.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#27

Post by bombcar »

jcranmer wrote: post #9
mactavish88 wrote: post #3

The absolute last thing I want in the filing of my taxes is non-determinism.

Ultimately, taxes is just filling out a spreadsheet and doing basic math... but the hard part of taxes is understanding how to fill out that spreadsheet correctly. Doing that requires answering several questions that many tax filers may simply not have the background to understand--I'm always struck whenever answering the question about "do you need to correct your W-2?" is how would I know when the answer is "yes."…

You would correct your W2 when the amount you receive wasn't what was reported - this is exceptionally rare.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#29

Post by groundzeros2015 »

kstrauser wrote: post #6
mactavish88 wrote: post #3

The absolute last thing I want in the filing of my taxes is non-determinism.

Boy, do I have bad news for you. Edit: To be clear, as a sibling post said, the basic arithmetic is easy enough. It's the tax opinion stuff that is absolutely not deterministic. If your situation is even moderately complex, there's a vast number of ways to describe your deductions, each with different tax implications and multi-year requirements. I'm not talking about being Jeff Bezos, either. Is your spouse an indep…

That’s a true side fact, but that has nothing to do with how the software behaves once you input your answers.

Re: Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI

#30

Post by groundzeros2015 »

Loudergood wrote: post #14
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know my own taxes pretty well. I don’t follow the tax code changes but could fill out a 1040 form on my own. Even did for a short time. I use tax prep software because I do NOT want to worry whether I copied the amount from line C to line K correctly. The IRS forms are a nightmare! The postscript in PDF should allow something more sane than what we have today in IRS forms, but that’s just wishful thinking.

No, that's Intuit lobbying.

Taxes are not objective. No software can reach into your life and classify your activies into legal categories.
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