ABSTRACT
The theory and practice of accounting provides for some very sophisticated methods of risk assessment, many of which have been superlatively enhanced by the development of spreadsheet technologies and software simulations. This chapter considers how the quintessentially human property of reassurance is likely to be transfigured by moves that will put intelligent machines in command of the kinds of compliance and reporting work traditionally performed by accountants. It argues for a complementary Research Agenda within which it is possible to evaluate the long-term cultural effects of abandoning responsibility for the types of risk, trust and reassurance that have previously been managed by flesh and blood accounting professionals to intelligent machines. Crucially, human risk-cognisance and risk-calculation combine this biologically foregrounded capacity for Umwelt with an equally strident aptitude for shaping constructs and making technology. Risk, trust and reassurance are familiar human properties that people may experience without the need for simulation on a computer screen as their window on the world.
