2018 Top 35-under-35 Finalist: Louise Chunnett

Louise is a founding member of the ALICE Team. In creating ALICE, a disruptive audit robot, the ALICE Team have proven that through the automation it is possible to automate audit to the point where the controls are tested every day by an audit robot. ALICE is pioneering a futuristic landscape using fringe-type technology. Building an audit robot that mimics the logic, rationale, decision-making and problem-solving of a human audit brain requires much research and development, possesses and requires volumes of training data. They are solving a problem that has not been solved until now.

The Bidvest ALICE Project has been a vehicle through which they have engaged in skills development by recruiting two interns to their ALICE Team. They have also attracted substantial interest from the global artificial intelligence (AI) community towards South Africa. We hope to create an AI lab out of Project Bidvest ALICE that would open opportunities previously not available here in South Africa. Our goal is to partner with initiatives that focus on IT skills development to enhance the programming and cybersecurity skillset of a large number of trainees and interns to create resources with these scarce skills in their community.

The launch of Beta ALICE over the past six months has been the highlight of this project so far.

In May 2018, the Bidvest ALICE project was recognised by the Department of Science and Technology as being of such an innovative and ground-breaking nature that it has been officially approved for the R&D allowance awarded under section 11D of the Income Tax Act.

Bidvest ALICE is automating a workforce from article clerk to board member. She is allowing those charged with governance with a view into the IT risks and environment that they were never able to achieve until now. ALICE is leading all other auditing firms to change the way they think about continuous auditing. Her ability to take the effort out of collecting data allows the auditor to rather spend time engaging in value-adding functions for clients, which is a key responsibility of all chartered accountants.