AI beats licensed accountants on speed and accuracy, but still can't close the books without supervision

A Mercor study shows that current AI models now outperform licensed CPAs in speed and accuracy on structured accounting tasks, marking a significant improvement over their performance eighteen months ago. However, models still fail to fully complete complex processes on the APEX Benchmark without human supervision. This indicates that while AI can handle specific components of accounting work, it remains unable to independently finalize financial reports.