AI that actually works: 3 takeaways from Jason Staats at Intuit Connect

With so many tools, trends, and “next big things,” it’s easy to get stuck in paralysis by analysis when it comes to technology — and the accounting world feels this acutely. As the industry sees an onslaught of new solutions promising to revolutionize the back office, the real challenge for accountants is cutting through the noise to figure out what actually makes them more productive.

I recently spoke with top accounting firm advisor Jason Staats about this at Intuit Connect 2025: how to move beyond theory and start using AI that genuinely works. He shared three key takeaways for accountants to reflect on as AI takes a bigger role in their work.

‘Hire’ a personal AI assistant

To start using AI, “don’t wait for your tech partners to figure it out,” Staats advised. Instead, start treating a chatbot as your own AI assistant today. AI can be a swiss army knife in your day to day, helping speed up frequent pain points, whether it's making tweaks to a client email or figuring out an Excel formula. The more hands-on the experimentation, the better accountants can start to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

Instead of fearing the loss of entry-level work, Staats urged firms to use AI as a catalyst for junior employees’ accelerated learning.

How can you put this into action? Staats suggested keeping an LLM of choice open on a monitor at all times. This will encourage you to leverage it to help filter distracting notifications, fact-check spreadsheet logic, or organize documents. “The power of AI is in its open-endedness,” he said.

Upskill junior talent with AI

Once AI starts feeling less like a black box, the next step is building a culture that encourages firm-wide experimentation. For Staats, this mindset is the answer to a common concern heard at Intuit Connect: “What are juniors going to do if there are no longer junior-level tasks?”

Instead of fearing the loss of entry-level work, he urged firms to use AI as a catalyst for junior employees’ accelerated learning. “Every single person that’s come out of school in the last couple of years are wizards in AI,” he said. By empowering younger associates to experiment with AI, they can speed up the path to more senior roles by becoming technology adoption leaders across the firm.

Staats suggested formalizing this experimentation: hold weekly or biweekly meetings where team members across levels share what AI tools or prompts they’ve tried, what worked, and what didn’t. That can help firms bridge generational gaps by empowering tech-savvy junior staff to help senior partners explore new use cases together.

AI for knowledge automation

Staats’s final use case looked further ahead to knowledge automation. If previous technology tools automated data collection and analysis, AI now automates knowledge by capturing and reusing the insights that can drive firms forward. “Today, AI is good enough to interact and answer questions at the 80% level of you,” Staats said. “That 80% version of you can talk to any number of people around the world 24/7.”

“Today, AI is good enough to interact and answer questions at the 80% level of you. That 80% version of you can talk to any number of people around the world 24/7.”
Jason Staats

The idea isn’t to replace human expertise but to scale it. Meeting recordings, email summaries, and voice notes captured through AI-powered tools like Granola, Gong, and Firefly can all be used to create and train centralized knowledge bases. This knowledge base can give firms a searchable knowledge ledger of client conversations and decisions that anyone can learn from. This can accelerate growth across the team and deepen collective intelligence across the firm. “Every day not captured is a day of context lost,” Staats concluded.

The future of accounting is in AI

The central takeaway from Staats was that forward-looking accountants must be proactive in treating AI as not just a project, but a habit. “Start small. Experiment daily. Share what you learn. Capture what you know,” he urged. Each step compounds into a smarter, faster, more connected organization.

With the right tools, people, and training, AI can make a real difference: time savings, sharper decisions, and helping people do their best work. Because when everyone’s equipped with an assistant, a community, and a shared brain of knowledge, the future of accounting is both more efficient and more strategic.