I just created a demo of Claude Computer Use for auditors.
I wrote a natural language prompt, and Claude AI took control of my computer to navigate to the PCAOB website, find an inspections report, and download it. It mimicked how I would navigate the website to find the report. Check out the video.
You may be saying, what is the big deal? Well, this is one of the earliest prototypes of an agentic workflow. Over the next few years, this type of technology will be able to automate large portions of an auditor's workflow, mostly the mundane tasks like collecting documents, filling in forms, etc.
When a user asks Claude Computer Use to perform a procedure, Claude looks at the screenshots of what is visible to the user and then counts how many pixels vertically and horizontally it needs to move the cursor to click in the correct place. It is designed using a transformer model, which is the same technology used by large language models to predict the next word in a sentence.
Keep in mind that Claude Computer Use is a controlled interface. It operates under direct human guidance for specific requested tasks. This differs from autonomous AI agents, which also allow for structured interaction with a computer, but involve autonomous decision-making to plan and execute multiple steps independently.
It also differs from robotic process automation (RPA). While both technologies mimic human interaction with a computer, RPA requires developers to write code to perform a procedure, whereas Claude Computer Use takes natural language as input. Also, Claude Computer Use possesses reasoning and is trained on where to move a cursor to achieve its desired goal, whereas RPA is trained to go to one specific spot on a webpage, which means that if the webpage changes, RPA breaks but Claude Computer Use will adjust.
As you will see in my video, agentic workflow automation is still in its infancy. Claude Computer Use is a prototype and it can't do much today, but it does give us a glimpse into the future. Given the rapid pace of development of AI models over the past couple of years, I expect Claude Computer Use to learn quickly.
By the way, do you think OpenAI is jealous that Anthropic made it to market first? You bet. OpenAI announced that its version of an AI Agent tool for tasks will launch in January and will be named 'Operator.' Read about it here.
It is great to have well-funded competitors; they push innovation at a fast pace.
At Tellen we harness these new technologies and figure out ways to optimize them for auditors to help transform their business operations. We fundamentally believe that the audit industry will undergo a massive transformation over the next three to five years and AI will be its new foundation. Reach out if you want to check out the Tellen AI Platform for accounting firms.
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