معايير PCAOB والذكاء الاصطناعي في عمليات التدقيق

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) sets auditing standards for audits of companies registered with the SEC. It regulates the work, not the tool. Several standards govern any procedure, whether a person does it or software does. AS 1105 (Audit Evidence) requires evidence to be sufficient and appropriate, and appropriateness depends on relevance and reliability. AS 2301 sets out how the auditor responds to assessed risks. AS 1201 covers supervision. AS 1215 (Audit Documentation) requires work papers that would let an experienced auditor with no prior link to the engagement understand the work performed, the evidence obtained and the conclusions reached. In 2024 the PCAOB adopted amendments to AS 1105 and AS 2301 that deal directly with technology-assisted analysis of information in electronic form. They take effect for audits of fiscal years beginning on or after December 15, 2025. The amendments make three points. When an analysis serves more than one purpose, such as risk assessment and substantive testing, the auditor must meet the objective of each purpose. The auditor must evaluate the reliability of electronic information, including information the company received from outside sources. And items that a tool flags as meeting the auditor's criteria must be investigated. They cannot be set aside. The PCAOB has also said publicly that its staff is monitoring how firms use generative AI. Its broader quality control standard, QC 1000, treats technological resources as part of a firm's quality control system. Two misconceptions are common. The first is that testing 100% of a population removes the need for judgment. A full-population test built on incomplete or altered data is still unreliable, and the flagged items still need to be evaluated. The second is that AI output counts as audit evidence in its own right. The evidence is the underlying information plus a procedure that was designed, performed and reviewed properly. A summary or score produced by a model is only as good as the checks performed on it.