An AI Journey – Blog Post #1

Niv Nissenson author of TheCFOAI blog

My first real encounter with AI happened a couple of years ago. I received a 500-word email from our VP of IT, angrily responding to my rejection of a big-budget project. The email was filled with high-minded phrases and academic-sounding terms like “consequential” and “pretraining”—words I had never once heard him use before. Something felt off. It was undeniable that AI wrote it.

AI really improved since then (it's much harder to tell if something was written by AI). Anytime I write an email that I want to be polished I run it through Chat GPT which is apparently much better than me in proof reading. But it goes so much further than proof reading. In the past few months I used AI for legal docs, due diligence, research, analysis, strategy, reasoning and business plans.

Then it dawned on me! AI is going to change everything about how CFOs and Financial Executives operate. And those who don’t get on board risk getting left behind.

That’s why I started this blog. This blog is more for me than anyone else. It’s my way of staying accountable—of forcing myself to dive deeper, learn more, and push forward.

I’ve always tried to be a “techy” CFO. I hate spreadsheets, paper, and long meetings. At nearly every company I’ve joined, I’ve started by pushing for better systems—cloud accounting, paperless processes, or full-blown ERP implementations (NetSuite is my favorite). Now, AI is the next big tech challenge—and opportunity—for finance leaders, and I don’t plan to miss it.

The goal of this blog is to explore the AI and tech tools that can supercharge Finance Executives, FinOps teams, accountants, bookkeepers, and everyone else in the field.

I hope you’ll join me on this AI journey.

— Niv Nissenson