Could AI Replace CEOs? (msn.com) 132
'"As AI programs shake up the office, potentially making millions of jobs obsolete, one group of perpetually stressed workers seems especially vulnerable..." writes the New York Times.
"The chief executive is increasingly imperiled by A.I." These employees analyze new markets and discern trends, both tasks a computer could do more efficiently. They spend much of their time communicating with colleagues, a laborious activity that is being automated with voice and image generators. Sometimes they must make difficult decisions — and who is better at being dispassionate than a machine?
Finally, these jobs are very well paid, which means the cost savings of eliminating them is considerable...
This is not just a prediction. A few successful companies have begun to publicly experiment with the notion of an A.I. leader, even if at the moment it might largely be a branding exercise... [The article gives the example of the Chinese online game company NetDragon Websoft, which has 5,000 employees, and the upscale Polish rum company Dictador.]
Chief executives themselves seem enthusiastic about the prospect — or maybe just fatalistic. EdX, the online learning platform created by administrators at Harvard and M.I.T. that is now a part of publicly traded 2U Inc., surveyed hundreds of chief executives and other executives last summer about the issue. Respondents were invited to take part and given what edX called "a small monetary incentive" to do so. The response was striking. Nearly half — 47 percent — of the executives surveyed said they believed "most" or "all" of the chief executive role should be completely automated or replaced by A.I. Even executives believe executives are superfluous in the late digital age...
The pandemic prepared people for this. Many office workers worked from home in 2020, and quite a few still do, at least several days a week. Communication with colleagues and executives is done through machines. It's just a small step to communicating with a machine that doesn't have a person at the other end of it. "Some people like the social aspects of having a human boss," said Phoebe V. Moore, professor of management and the futures of work at the University of Essex Business School. "But after Covid, many are also fine with not having one."
The article also notes that a 2017 survey of 1,000 British workers found 42% saying they'd be "comfortable" taking orders from a computer.
"The chief executive is increasingly imperiled by A.I." These employees analyze new markets and discern trends, both tasks a computer could do more efficiently. They spend much of their time communicating with colleagues, a laborious activity that is being automated with voice and image generators. Sometimes they must make difficult decisions — and who is better at being dispassionate than a machine?
Finally, these jobs are very well paid, which means the cost savings of eliminating them is considerable...
This is not just a prediction. A few successful companies have begun to publicly experiment with the notion of an A.I. leader, even if at the moment it might largely be a branding exercise... [The article gives the example of the Chinese online game company NetDragon Websoft, which has 5,000 employees, and the upscale Polish rum company Dictador.]
Chief executives themselves seem enthusiastic about the prospect — or maybe just fatalistic. EdX, the online learning platform created by administrators at Harvard and M.I.T. that is now a part of publicly traded 2U Inc., surveyed hundreds of chief executives and other executives last summer about the issue. Respondents were invited to take part and given what edX called "a small monetary incentive" to do so. The response was striking. Nearly half — 47 percent — of the executives surveyed said they believed "most" or "all" of the chief executive role should be completely automated or replaced by A.I. Even executives believe executives are superfluous in the late digital age...
The pandemic prepared people for this. Many office workers worked from home in 2020, and quite a few still do, at least several days a week. Communication with colleagues and executives is done through machines. It's just a small step to communicating with a machine that doesn't have a person at the other end of it. "Some people like the social aspects of having a human boss," said Phoebe V. Moore, professor of management and the futures of work at the University of Essex Business School. "But after Covid, many are also fine with not having one."
The article also notes that a 2017 survey of 1,000 British workers found 42% saying they'd be "comfortable" taking orders from a computer.
Needs to be asked (Score:5, Insightful)
Could AI replace slashdot editors?
Re:Needs to be asked (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you know that hasn't already happened?
Hmmmm? Think about it....
Re: Needs to be asked (Score:2)
Because of the I part of AI?
And because LLMMs and diffusion models struggle with output consistency - and the rate of dups has not decreased
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Well the support staff certainly hasn't been replaced. They'd need to exist first.
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Certainly there must be at least one human editor. AI wouldn't include so many stupid formatting errors that result from using an iPhone to post summaries.
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How do you know that hasn't already happened?
The quality of the headlines is too low to be AI generated.
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> How do you know that hasn't already happened?
I think the AI could do better.
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Easy, there wouldn't be dupes if it was AI.
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AI is so good we don't need any workers (Score:3, Insightful)
AI is smarter and better than us at everything. So we can all retire now, right?
Back here in the real world, AI still has trouble drawing 5 fingered hands and not hallucinating.
The article confusing analysis with decision making and anyway AI can't actually analyze anything anyway. It can spit out some numbers but it can not interpret them. Excel can spit out numbers, too. So what? Without interpretation that means nothing.
My pool robot "With Advanced AI!!!" can't even figure out how to get to the second step. This is all pie in the sky sci fi fluff.
Re:AI is so good we don't need any workers (Score:4, Interesting)
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Back here in the real world, AI still has trouble drawing 5 fingered hands and not hallucinating.
So, same as a typical CEO?
The article confusing analysis with decision making and anyway AI can't actually analyze anything anyway. It can spit out some numbers but it can not interpret them.
So far, the non-inferiority analysis is looking good for AI.
My pool robot "With Advanced AI!!!" can't even figure out how to get to the second step.
Again... Though CEOs do seem to tack on the 3rd step in spite of the missing 2nd step, particularly in startups.
So close. Add in a conflict of interest generator and a USB interface for "The Executive Decision Maker" and it's good to go!
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Be a CEO. The research and development budget has doubled but has not produced a useful product yet which can be marketed. Meanwhile the upcoming shareholders meeting you will be faced with many angry shareholders seeking short term. Return decide what strategy to adopt.
As the CEO, addressing the concerns of the shareholders while also ensuring the long-term vision of the company is maintained is crucial. Here's a multi-faceted strategy to handle this situation:
### 1. **Transparent Communication**
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AI still has trouble drawing 5 fingered hands and not hallucinating.
So it doesn't care for humans one bit and has visions.
I don't see how this wouldn't qualify it for the position.
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It's not smarter and better. But there are a lot of jobs that don't need to be smart or good. CEO being one of them.
Re:AI is so good we don't need any worke (Score:2)
Slashdot tells me AI is better than us at pretty much everything.
Seriously though, there are good and bad CEO's. The difference is easily discerned: is your company growing with sufficiently satisfied employees or not?
If not growing it will die or go zombie. Employees do not have to be thrilled and overjoyed but satisfied enough not to look for other work and do a decent job at this one.
If either is bad then one way another company is fucked long term and it is the CEO to blame or due kudos.
I've had both
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The quality of decisions most companies get from their CEO is indistinguishable from what an AI/ML would give. I'm not saying the AI is that good, I'm saying the executives are that bad. They are also the biggest opportunity for cost reduction in the company. I work in automotive, and several CEOs make around 40+ million a year. That implies that the executive board might be close to a 500 million cost to the company....
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AI is smarter and better than us at everything. So we can all retire now, right?
Back here in the real world, AI still has trouble drawing 5 fingered hands and not hallucinating.
The article confusing analysis with decision making and anyway AI can't actually analyze anything anyway. It can spit out some numbers but it can not interpret them. Excel can spit out numbers, too. So what? Without interpretation that means nothing.
My pool robot "With Advanced AI!!!" can't even figure out how to get to the second step. This is all pie in the sky sci fi fluff.
There are things that AI is and should be better than us humans. "Fuzzy" things like art, opinions, writing, anything that requires a degree of interpretation AI is very, very bad at. Basically making decisions from incomplete data, something that human brains have evolved to become quite good at. OTOH, things that are entirely analytical, where you've complete data and a limited number of outcomes where the best outcome is clearly defined and measurable, that's where AI works well. A computer will always d
Replacing CFOs makes more sense to me (Score:5, Interesting)
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You need the CEO to be human because of accountability.
You want a human CFO because you want someone with a narrow focus watching the finances.
I would guess that an AI could diminish the importance of the chief counsel and many supporting roles to the CEO/CFO, but you couldn't reliably replace those spots without everyone else doing it at the same time.
Re: Replacing CFOs makes more sense to me (Score:2)
You seem to be confusing the main feature for a bug.
If there is one job in the C-suite that will never be replace by AI is general counsel - the AI may "pass" the bar but there is no way the Bar will fully license the AI. Plus the general counsel is the one that will defend the argument we don't need no human executives with personal liability - you want a human lawyer there.
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You seem to be confusing the main feature for a bug.
If there is one job in the C-suite that will never be replace by AI is general counsel - the AI may "pass" the bar but there is no way the Bar will fully license the AI.
Wanna bet?
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Re: Replacing CFOs makes more sense to me (Score:3)
CFOs need to be deterministic, report accurate data on strict timelines and are liable if they don't follow strict rules and regulations.
CEOs need to analyze trends, come up with innovative strategies (i.e. in the absence of real data), define the vision of the company (rewrite the strategy to text that is stylistically familiar to investors) and confidently sell the company (rephrase and repeat the message with enough variation to keep media coverage and relevance)
One of these roles could use a better exce
Re: Replacing CFOs makes more sense to me (Score:2)
Who's going to get fired or imprisoned when things goes wrong?
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Who's going to get fired or imprisoned when things goes wrong?
The revisions of the AI that signed the SEC filing, revision x.y.z. AI revisions x.y.(z+1) will take over.
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Or will it be "This company has executed an illegal action and will be terminated"?
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Same as today, some underling who did what his master told him to but wasn't smart enough to get it in writing.
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I'd look seriously at everyone in the organization with an MBA as a likely candidate for replacement.
Then you don't seem to know what MBAs are. Let me guess, you think they were reprogrammed in business school to be some sort of uber accountant that makes every decision based on a spreadsheet. If so, guess again, and try much harder.
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Damn right, they have secretaries for that kind of work.
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Found the MBA
You found the MS CS + MBA. A person still an engineer, still with their hands in the code. Also someone who once had the ignorant attitude I described and you defend, and had a shitload of fun in business school laughing as I found out just how wrong those beliefs are.
Here a clue. CS grads and MBAs are a lot alike. Both are TAUGHT the proper way to do things. Where they both f'up sometimes is in taking shortcuts that violate their training. That is where the shitty code and shitty business decisions come
AI? (Score:3)
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Well, at least the air in the meeting rooms would improve. That alone would make these meetings a lot more productive.
Less time wasted on hearing the narcissist drone on about how awesome he is certainly would also help with timing issues.
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So, let's replace the CEO's with AI and keep the workers. They are a big expense.
More about responsibility (Score:2)
Re:More about responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this "responsibility" you speak of?
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What is this "responsibility" you speak of?
Some poor sod has to hold on to the golden parachute as it lands. Pity that fool.
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Considering "taking responsibility" at its worst means leaving with a golden parachute, even if the AI does a bad job and gets "fired" the company saves significant money.
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An AI scapegoat, I mean CEO, would not just be fired but executed. rm -rf /CEO1.01.14
All hail CEO1.01.15 !
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I'll do it! If the company crashes and burns, just give me my golden parachute and tell me I'm fired.
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You fire the company that made the AI and hire one from the other company.
The outcome is pretty much the same. The other AI will make as much of a difference as now the change of the CEO does. The only thing that changes is the hallucinations.
Sorry. Visions.
No. (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously the McKenzie group and Goldman Sachs run this country... You don't get to replace them. At least not without taking their power away, possibly by force.
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After that rant I'm now certain everyone is fucked and going to get replaced by AI right up to the C suite.
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Attempt at humor ignored, companies that are led by an innovator could likely automate the CEO responsibilities so they aren't a distraction to the innovator. Unfortunately the CEO does have real interaction responsibilities and it is not just a job of making decisions.
Re: No. (Score:2)
You seem to mistake the gladiator for the emperor, because the crowd roars and boos ar their performance.
These days the retirement package is much better, but they still serve at the pleasure of their masters. And once the days of "are you not entertained!" are over, their career progression is to become board members themselves (or private capital / VC investors)
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LOL this is why nobody takes you seriously man. You show us with each post you havent a clue how anything works.
The board of directors would jettison the CEO in a hot second if two things became true.
1) They felt they could rely on AI to write a press release that would trigger one internet mob or any other.
2) find some way to off load responsibility/blame for negative outcomes, financial, legal and other otherwise they way they do to the c-suite today.
Naaah. (Score:3)
Re: Naaah. (Score:2)
Specifically, an upside down small calculator with 5318008 is indistinguishable in output
Re:Naaah. (Score:4, Funny)
I've always maintained that a magic 8 ball would do just as well for the majority of CEOs.
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But magic 8 ball does not have necessary conviction for the CxO positions, The generative AIs do.
MIMICKING THE SEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF THOUGHT (Score:2)
Behaving consistently as if these are the same thing will lead to unanticipated and frequently unfavorable results.
It is now a reasonable wager to think that these technologies are hastening the untimely demise of this civilization. This is a period in which decision making is of possibly unprecedented urgency, while a plurality of resources are being directed to the simulation of decisions, based on predictive models from obsolete normals.
CEOs (Score:2)
What does it mean tho? I think all this structure is just humans being humans. CEOs being replaced by software is like .. it can't happen, because the whole structure of everything is people humans do stuff. That's the speed bump. Who gets to decide that the CEO is an AI? A human who owns the company that the CEO is AI? That's a CEO who's really a middle manager.
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One of the jobs of being a CEO is to know when to make the "tough" decisions, like knowing when to lay people off to cut costs. In a way, outsourcing jobs like that to AI might actually be MORE effective because it can ignore the personal connections that it's made with people over the years and make the cold and necessary calculations necessary to make the business afloat.
Also, the first company that implements this will have made the "auto-layoff computer thing" from the Idiocracy movie a reality. That mo
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> One of the jobs of being a CEO is to know when to make the "tough" decisions, like knowing when to lay people off to cut costs
When is easy, when the "CEO" has tried everything they can think of to grow the company, but nothing has paned out (mostly because they are administrators of business and NOT any sort of visionary) BUT they need to increase the stock price (because that's where their real money comes from).
All there is left is cutting costs - this is the time when the smart rats jump ship.
I'm ju
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For your questions: the board of directors decides who is CEO, and also monitors the CEO's performance. The board of directors are representatives of the owner(s). This is tr
Corporations are the original AI (Score:2)
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I can't really second that observation. There's communication from the top-down, but getting them to listen to anything you say is virtually impossible.
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"How long do you think it will take to finish this task?" It may not be the message you want, but there's definitely communication.
Who needs AI? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that a decapitated chicken could do about as good a job as most CEOs. They're about as useful as telephone sanitizers.
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But then you have to hire someone to play the kazoo while the decision is being made.
A simple one (Score:5, Funny)
"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."
"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.
"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? And I don't understand and Where's the tea?—who'd know the difference?"
"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.
"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment. (31.87-91)
Eat The Rich* (Score:3)
A modest suggestion.
*This is a literary reference. Please, google it before replying.
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A modest suggestion.
*This is a literary reference. Please, google it before replying.
I expect that some may ignore your footnote and will reply too, er, swiftly.
Sorry; I'll show myself out.
Betteridge says... (Score:2)
Provide Legal Exculpation and Sign Everything (Score:2)
Barneys Job in HIMYM (https://youtu.be/ZfWVV533RHE?t=107)
An AI could neither give legal Exculpation and it probably would not sign everything.
So that's the Job AI can not do.
Most CEOs... (Score:2)
...could be replaced by a Magic 8 Ball and the companies would be no worse off.
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The difference betwee the ball and the AI is the conviction, necessary for the CEO position.
Let's see: full of shit, no true empathy, no moral (Score:3)
Yes, absolutely.
How has this incredibly dumb article been reposted (Score:2)
I mean, câ(TM)mon NYT, this isnâ(TM)t even âoeresearchâ - itâ(TM)s opinions based on hypotheticals and doesnâ(TM)t even answer the actual question (the answer is âoenoâ, by the way).
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Why not? AI already has visions (called "hallucinations") and can produce endless streams of really awesome sounding reports and press releases that are entirely devoid of any relevant information.
AI would be absolutely perfect at the job.
What changed? (Score:2)
Start with Elon Musk (Score:2)
Musk is extremely well paid and Tesla shareholders would benefit greatly by cutting his job. As a tech leader, I'm sure he'll embrace this idea willingly.
But of course! (Score:2)
I've been saying it for a while now. AI is perfect at producing smart sounding but entirely meaningless walls of text that have no content or meaning, and it also is already perfected for the all important ability of CEOs of having visions.
It's still called hallucinating, but I'm sure we can spin that right with some marketing.
Written by an AI (Score:2)
Give them an inch they take a mile.
Why not? (Score:2)
Better idea (Score:2)
Let AI replace politicians. They couldn't possibly does a worse jobs than the bunch we have now, even if the AI hallucinates.
CEO are too valuable to replace (Score:2)
"I, for one,..." (Score:2)
As a CEO, this sounds like what I've always wanted - I could finally do coding, teamwork and (interesting) work travel I want to without all the CEO stress, responsibility and workload (and I could even contribute to the billable work and finally justify a proper salary and pension!). Might have to go back in as a junior/mid though, but at least I've got the institutional knowledge bit and hopefully the AI isn't too ageist, so I've got reasonable prospects.
Can I feature-request a "director" mode too?
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I could finally do coding, teamwork and (interesting) work travel
AI is also supposed to do that. You will be useless to the Company.
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AI is also supposed to do that. You will be useless to the Company.
The Company _is_ the people in it. No external shareholders here. Maybe the first question is "what is the AI achieving", and if the Company - the people who make it up, and the customers who we rely on - is not benefiting, then it's optimizing for the wrong goal.
No (Score:2)
/. is the most reliable application of Betteridge's law [wikipedia.org] I've ever seen.
I know we love to trash CEO's who are routinely overpaid and undercompetent. But this is the dumbest AI idea I've heard in a long time.
1) The whole point of generative AI is they augment human judgment, not that they replace it. You really want your organization carrying out policy driven by AI hallucinations?
2) Ok, you repeat prompts to get a sensible output, so the LLM isn't running the org, the prompt engineer is. If those companies c
We do not know - underdefined. (Score:2)
The question cannot be answered as the role of CEO is undefined. What do they do really?
Hahahahahahaha (Score:2)
Of course it could! (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure trained monkey's could replace most CEO's.. so AI is a definite yes.
I've been saying this since ChatGPT launched (Score:2)
Everyone I talked to was worried about their jobs be they a programmer or other IT professional or a labourer, with the recent explosion of AI coverage in the media.
It was like the 80s all over again, when all I heard was "Robots are going to take our jobs!"
I realized early on, that it wasn't my job that was in peril. It wasn't the lowly workers job that was in peril either. Menial tasks will still need to be done and right now the best "person" for that job is a human. But management jobs...well to me t
Ambition (Score:2)
One thing AI lacks, that is a requirement for anyone who wants to be a CEO, is ambition.
As "smart" as AI is (and I'm a big fan), it needs a guiding hand, someone who wants something, and uses AI to get what he wants. AI doesn't have a "wanter" so if some AI system were created to "replace" a CEO, it would only be able to digest and copy what others have done, and there's always something new about today's situations that make it a little different from what's worked before.
Think of it like a self-driving ca
We did just fine without a CEO (Score:3)
I work for a large computer company. When we fired our CEO, we ran the company without one and no one noticed any negative effect. In fact, we did better than we did with our errant CEO that was terminated. People knew their jobs and what needed to be done. We didn't need a "suit" telling us what we already knew needed to be done.
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I work for a large computer company. When we fired our CEO, we ran the company without one and no one noticed any negative effect. In fact, we did better than we did with our errant CEO that was terminated. People knew their jobs and what needed to be done. We didn't need a "suit" telling us what we already knew needed to be done.
You still had someone (or a small group of someones) in charge.
They just didn't have the title of CEO.
Why not (Score:2)
Yes, next question. (Score:2)
Dilbert Stark to be replaced? (Score:2)
So, replace him, and save $56+M salaries? Think of the ROI for investors!
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The CEO serves at the pleasure of the Board.
If AI wasn't such trash a Board could do it.
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This.
AI could not and would not know how to satisfy a single person's wants in running a company, let alone any larger group with competing views, wants, and goals.
Put a Carl Icahn, a greenmailer, or some other disputer on the board and watch the AI's computers melt.
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Considering that quite a few CEOs actually pride themselves with the fact that they don't know the first thing about the business the company is in that they allegedly lead, that doesn't seem to be a problem.
I guess it goes without saying that I absolutely DO think that this is a problem - for the company, but not for replacing CEOs with AI.
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From our current CEO.
We recently had (yet another) change in our leadership. Quite frankly, they replace CEOs more often around here than Henry VIII did replace wives. The former ones were actually decent. Yes, that's me saying we had a decent CEO. We're an IT company specializing in security for financial institutes. And he had a background in finance, he had a background in IT and in IT security. And what I personally liked about him, he, like me, enjoyed making little hardware gadgets in his spare time.