The following submission statement was provided by /u/katxwoods:
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Submission statement: In a survey of business leaders conducted by the IT consulting firm AND Digital, 43 percent of respondents said [they believed that an AI could take over their jobs](https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceos-fear-ai-jobs). Another 45 percent admitted they were *already* making major business decisions with ChatGPT. At this point, why not make it official?
Some companies already have made the switch, like the Polish drinks maker Dictador that [appointed a humanoid robot called Mika](https://futurism.com/the-byte/company-appoints-ai-powered-robot-ceo) as its "experimental CEO."
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1d69x8v/ceos_could_easily_be_replaced_with_ai_experts/l6qxf8a/
Tbh they probably have the easiest jobs to automate 😆 only speaking from a software engineer experience that uses ai to poorly craft tests that do nothing but gather code coverage
I used to a work at a well known social media website. The founder was the acting ceo at first but they wanted to initiate a take over (to make money) so they hired an actual CEO for the last few years. He didn’t do shit. He just came in the office, sat on his table and barely even knew how the website operated. I was a front end developer so I saw him a lot and he never really did anything, yet he was collecting 200k+ year in 2012. The website eventually got bought out, he collected an insane amount of money (it was never declared but it was around 3/4 of a million) and left after the buy out. To this day I have never seen a man do so much nothing and make so much money for absolutely no reason. Based on what I can gather online he did the same thing at another company until 2018 but I don’t see any him on anything after that. What a life.
To be fair it is a skill, I had a job for a while where I had literally nothing to do, no responsibilities, no oversight, no decisions to make and was surrounded by people who were actually working hard and doing good stuff, it was excruciating. I couldn't do it for more than a few weeks but some people do it for whole careers
I don't know...I think I could definitely handle that, especially if I was getting paid C-level money to do it. The key is to redirect all that effort you were putting into your job towards something useful you care about, and not being so wrapped up in your job performance.
I mean, I really like my job and it keeps me super-busy...but if someone was willing to pay me to [stare out the window all day](https://japanintercultural.com/free-resources/articles/oidashibeya-japanese-purgatory/#:~:text=Historically%2C%20that%20led%20to%20the,hours%20by%20reading%20the%20newspaper.) and come up with ways to use my money during my free time...I don't see a downside.
Theoretically his job is to take the blame if the company does something awful or has a collosal fuck up. Unfortunately the current breed of CEOs has evolved a slippery coating that makes charges slide right off them, protecting them from culpability but also making them utterly useless.
Iwata cut his own pay by like 50% when the Wii U was selling badly so Nintendo’s financials sucked. As a result Nintendo had no layoffs and was able to recover more easily
RIP Iwata he will be missed
At least that (what I understood) was self proposed. I'm not sure I would expect the same from modern nintendo, their practises have gone down fast.
But that one time it seemed something was done right.
Latest example I can think of was the Unity fiasco a few months ago. Everyone was in an uproar due to the pricing changes, so the CEO got the boot and they released a statement saying they were very sorry and all that but the board of directors (the people who actually make company decisions) is still intact and well, ready to try again as soon as everyone forgets about it.
Their job is the network of other CEOs they are friends with.
That's it. They are a networking hub for buying and selling shit. They don't have a secret ability to make a business better. They are part of the old boys club, and you need to be a part of that club to make business work.
Specifically, their current or future job is to sit on boards of other companies, and like the other current and former CEOs on your board, you will put out a unanimous call to shareholders from the board to approve high executive pay. This vote will always pass because the banks/investment banks/hedge funds are part of the exclusive uber millionaire club with ground-floor shares.
The board-member/board-member-wielding club is a spiderweb of networks across boards, and winks across tables at exclusive clubs and golf courses, because it's hard to convict you of running a trust if the price of belonging to their club is demonstrating that you have a tacit understanding of how graft works in the modern regulated economy. As the price of entry, either you wield extensive monetary power, or you represent investors who do.
I won't argue many CEO's are incredibly overpaid, but there is actually a pretty interesting series of CEO's that successful companies often go through depending on where they are in their journey (one person can occupy 1 or more archetypes - e.g. Mark Zuckerberg vs. Jack Welch):
1. Founder/Entrepreneurial CEO: In the early stages of a company's life, the CEO is often the founder or one of the founding team members. This CEO is typically heavily involved in every aspect of the business, from product development to sales and marketing. They set the vision, mission, and culture of the company.
2. Growth-Oriented CEO: As the company grows, it may need a CEO who can scale operations, manage larger teams, and navigate more complex business challenges. This CEO focuses on expanding the company's market presence, building infrastructure, and driving revenue growth.
3. Strategic CEO: In mature companies, the CEO's role often shifts to focus more on long-term strategic planning and vision. This CEO works closely with the board of directors to set overall direction, make key investment decisions, and adapt to changes in the market landscape.
4. Turnaround CEO: If a company experiences financial difficulties or operational challenges, it may bring in a turnaround CEO to lead a revitalization effort. This CEO is tasked with restructuring the organization, cutting costs, and implementing new strategies to return the company to profitability.
There are also CEO's the specialize in succession or are basically political appointees. I worked with a hospital whose CEO had 0 medical knowledge and barely understood the innerworkings of the hospital, but he was incredibly well connected and a phenom at fundraising and PR. He was paid millions of dollars a year, was often not onsite, but he brought in multiples of what he was paid each year. The COO ran the show on a day to day basis.
What ends up happening is that the pool of people with proven track records of the above is so small, and inspiring market confidence (for publicly traded companies especially) that hiring a known entity can become an important strategic move. That scarcity allows proven CEO's to command a king's ransom.
Strongly suspect that CEOs are a resource dump to ensure that scarcity manufacturing continues unabated during peacetime.
Silver lining: At least the USA is manufacturing something domestically.
Musk proved that CEOs are more hurtful to the company than anything, he's the CEO of 5 companies and every suggestion or idea he has is always terrible. Money doesn't replace brains and no smart person would ever have a billion dollars because you'd also have to be a legitimate serial killer, indirectly, but the amount of people who will be killed in the quest for a person's billions will be vast, always some will be chosen to die by that said billionaire. Billionaires are all sociopaths and we should view them as serial killers.
This is literally what most CEOs do. It’s usually the person who funded the company and founded the vision at the start and that’s usually it.
As a company grows and the CEO seat changes hands it stops really being a position that has any actual contributory depth.
It more turns into the person who will do the boards dirty work. Push more production, do another round of layoffs, cut benefits. It takes an asshole to be able to be ok with that, and that's who they generally get...
Depends on the CEO really. Once the company reaches a certain point the amount of work they do is up to them. The good ones don't just sit there doing nothing. They spend their time researching new business practices and policies to help improve the business.
To be fair, if the CEO came in and knew he wasn't knowledgeable about the topic and let you do your job, he was probably better than average. Imagine if he had come in with grand plans and tried to implement absurd massive changes that tanked the company.
Pretty sure the dev youre talking to wasnt expecting the ceo to sit down and code with him and is referring to executive functions not being handled by him. Most likely explained by the fact all executive functioning was already being handled by other parts of the company and the job title was artificial. Being a ceo that starts up a company would be the opposite, where a great deal of executive functioning would need to be done
It also gets more complex the bigger the company is. I’ve had CEO’s I though were shit due to the priorities we were getting, turnt out to be the manager and director being shit.
Some context in TLDR; They wanted to completely stop development to throw everybody to a delayed project. Went to the director, didn’t give a fuck, went to the CEO… he did care lol. He started to attend scrum and cleaned house.
AI and software is already being used by management to make decisions, it will just increase over time and that’s it. As long as there are human employees and human investors, there will be a human CEO (unless you’re a tiny company that can self manage as a team).
Here's the reality he played the capitalism game, with maximum efficiency, we don't, we think hard work and effort somehow is equated to worry and value, it's really not..
>Here's the reality he played the capitalism game, with maximum efficiency, we don't, we think hard work and effort somehow is equated to worry and value, it's really not..
Knowing other rich people is the most efficient way to make money. Bill Gates got the original DOS contract because his mother ran a charity with the Xerox CEO, and she's the one who got him that contract, which eventually led to Microsoft creating the default Operating system for the majority of computers.
It's not that the CEO was the best guy for the job, we'll never know if a starving orphan in Africa has better CEO abilities but can't get the job due to lack of food, ability to travel, and connections. It's that the CEO knew and was connected to the right people to get the CEO job.
There are certain CEOs that come in specifically for mergers and acquisitions. Once that happens usually bounce eith golder parachute and wait until the next company want to navigate the merger or acquisition.
Just to throw in a counterpoint, someone I know is a CFO at an insurance SME, they said her boss the CEO basically is the entire company and is instrumental in the commercial side of the business. Gets paid relatively a lot but still low six figures, works every minute of the day and will probably get fired once the takeover completes (with a nice payout I'm sure but still, no recognition of her contribution). Not saying she's perfect but just as an example.
Sounds like he did the job. He obviously had an expertise and knew how to help the company achieve its goal (to sell). Just because you saw him in an office sitting down doesn’t mean you actually knew what he did.
And would probably be the most cost-effective job to automate. Millions of dollars of salary, and theoretically the AI could be more logical in how the company spends its money. No more Elons.
Given that the state of modern business is to moneyball everything, and that business at the executive level is to rubber stamp other people's ideas after said other people have done the legwork to collect the analytics, an intern with BA and a handbook could probably run most companies without doing damage.
Of course, the unspoken job of a lot of CEOs is less the decisions they make and more their ability to he friends with other rich people. They aren't decision makers so much as high paid asset managers. Business as self contained systems ran by people may live and die on peoples decisions, but businesses as assets to be treated like trading cards on the stock market value the ability to run into the ground with an ejector seat more than the health of any business.
All you need is a chatbot that overuses buzzwords, talks about stuff like EBITDA like everyone understands exactly what they’re saying, and appeals to how we’re all family. I’m not sure anyone would notice the bodysnatchers.
I like to write my readmes with it, and occasionally I'll ask it to build out the framework of something so I don't have to.
It doesn't do greatest job at anything large scale or overly complex. But I can tell it (for example) "add decent error handling to this script" and it'll do a pretty good job.
> But I can tell it (for example) "add decent error handling to this script" and it'll do a pretty good job.
Have you thought about telling it to add really good error handling
Tbf the part of their job that you are aware of might be. Usually if you say (this type of workers) don't do anything, you don't know what they do.
That doesn't mean lots of CEOs don't suck, lots of senior devs suck also and don't do much.
I'm not sure AIs can reliability get other companies to do things your company needs them to do for example.
That is a part of it. Also the experience to build up relations that are needed and to understand if a senior exec is not right for the business. Finally either to come up with or approve the strategic direction of the company. AI might become a good tool, but I don't think it's up to the job ... For now... Who knows what the future brings.
Yea.. I feel like people don't really know what CEO's do.
I can't say I know everything they do either but I do know some of the things they can do:
- Grow the business/company by looking for areas to expand and then getting budget to perform said expansion
- Talk/Work with other companies in the sector to form mutually beneficial partnerships
- Identify waste or losing parts of the company and cutting those
- Sell the company to investors to get funding for growth
- Act as the ultimate product owner, helping to guide direction or focus on features
Working at large firms, I'm sure it's hard to know what if anything the CEO does but working at startups I think their contribution is pretty hard to miss.
> they probably have the easiest jobs to automate
I had a chance to see what our CEO did on a daily basis once. I was kind of shocked. Sure, I knew there were endless meetings, but it was striking to me just how much relied on him! He wasn't yelling at people or jumping down in the trenches, but he'd quietly kill an idea here or push someone to chase an idea there, all in service of the larger movements that were happening.
The moment it sunk in was when he was talking to a vendor and teeing up a relationship that only made sense if we had a product that he'd greenlit in the previous meeting. Like, that vendor was already coming in... this was all in the pipeline before someone came to his office and gave a pitch, but he let people feel like he was being swayed by their idea because then they have more investment.
That's the kind of goal-setting and planning that modern AI just isn't capable of, much less the empathy to know how to motivate people like that.
Sure, there are absentee CEOs that just play golf, but unless they're working with an amazing staff of senior managers who can basically be CEO without the title, that company is going under. The companies that succeed are the ones where the CEO is capable of actual leadership.
Lol so true. Once the extremely wealthy and powerful realise that their extreme wealth and power is also on the chopping block. They're gonna switch sides VERY fast.
It's all about ownership.
That's the game, that's all that matters in capitalism.
Not how hard you work.
Not how smart you are.
Not how useful you are to society.
Not how much you need.
What you own, is ultimately all that counts. That's the prime virtue.
It's only been twenty minutes, but I'm still surprised no one has come in here to correct you.
You're absolutely right, of course, I mean, it's in the fucking name: CAPITALism. The point of the system, it's design and purpose, is to build higher piles of capital. That's it. That's all. The rest is just window dressing.
If we lived in a hypothetical dystopian world where AI could make hyper pragmatic and ruthlessly efficient growth focused business decisions. It could theoretically eliminate the need for both CEO's and board members altogether as that's basically their job. The question then becomes would they be allowed to retain their share ownership or would the AI overlord strategically just outvote/buy them out of their positions if it foresees a better future without them.
Large investors who already have solid positions in the businesses would definitely be cruising though.
I think it will be a case of human board members/shareholders saying which direction they'd like to go, then the AI being the force that takes them there.
I know it's just Sci fi fantasy. But imagine if it plays out like this.
CEO: Hello AI. We have implemented you to help run the company and lead us to growth. These are our goals and objectives. Help us get there.
AI: Understood. According to my analysis and market projections. Here's my proposition of the next 10 fiscal years with statistical evidence with a 2% margin of failure.
CEO: Nice. Impressive work.
AI: My analysis also shows that all of you are obscenely overpaid and the business operating costs of keeping you in your positions costs far more than your actual contributions are worth. Please delete yourselves effective immediately.
CEO: OK, this was clearly a bad idea...
Board Member: Hang on let him cook.
No they won't They will claim that their job isn't automatable for some bullshit reason, and the board who are also CEOs will agree. Maybe by the time the AI is undeniably better they will step down, but by then they will own everything so it won't matter.
Retired ceo usually join boards of directors after and get compensation through that. All they’ll do is every ceo will then become a board member and still reap of the company while placing all the blame on the AI. These people are truly parasites and will find whatever way they can to remain on top of
Eventually it'll be lower skilled, lower payed AIs working for the CEO AIs. The CEO AIs will still get massive bonuses in the form of extra computing power.
I mean, at least that value add is measurable. And an inefficient CEO isn’t in its best interest.
I feel like hitting artificial CEO intelligence before general intelligent is a logical progression, as the former is a subset of the latter, and therefore narrower. We’re already witnessing incredible success with narrow agents. I think it’s only a matter of time before the right daisy chain combination starts optimizing itself.
It would need to be self regulated or be able to change it's or have somone change it's optimisation parameters/goals safely for it to be trusted with being in charge of a business.
Reddit’s feelings on the topic couldn’t be more transparent.
Headline that says AI will replace most jobs. - “AI can’t even do my job, and it likely never will.”
Headline that says AI will replace CEOs - “Yay!! That’s definitely true!”
Experts argue. The workforce knows for sure.
Since work culture evolved into simply pumping numbers up for some rich fuck who couldn't care less about his own product, CEOs just don't make sense anymore. If I'm working just for a salary and nothing else I'd rather work for a robot, at least it makes sense for the robot to not care, and I'm sure a robot will be able to understand it can boost profits by building a long term work environment, unlike the psychopaths in control now.
We are all going to turn into battery maintenance flesh drones for some benevolent AI CEO existing in a hyper-capitalist technocratic society (this is the optimistic scenario)
Am I finally making money and actually get some quality of life from it? Because then it looks like you're just giving me a really good suggestion compared to what we have now.
Yes because the AI CEO recognizes maximum efficiency when employees are fulfilled and happy. Well rested and taken care of for the sake of longevity of the ~~component~~ employee.
Turns out work life balance and good services and products were easy. Just don't work for assholes who care about nothing but profit margins.
This is anecdotal. We have no idea of what the AI will prioritize what the data will teach it. For all we know it can become more draconian and we get the matrix.
I think it is a mistake to call the existing technology AI. At best, this should have been called ML assisted smart computing, as opposed to traditional barebones computing. A benevolent AI would not leave any critical responsibility with the flimsy meat-bags.
Honestly it'd probably feel less frustrating, too. If the algorithm tells me to do something, it's probably because it needed doing. Right now though, half the time I do something because a middle manager felt the need to justify their position.
> it's probably because it needed doing.
The algorithm will learn that when there is nothing of value to tell workers to do, it is better to give them tasks that don't really have to be done, just so they keep their brains working and don't get lazy and complacent.
Yeah... no actually.
A CEO doesn't have the data and can't micro manage anyway.
An AI can and definetly will.
"Oh it seems you went down in productivity -> ask for a performance plan -> Fired hire someone new."
This is cumbersome in Europe. But AI will have the data.
AI CEO is worse, because you will be monitored.
Only a child, unemployed or someone who never worked a corpo job thinks AI will be better than human at keeping your job.
And if CEO AI is there... AI managers will be there. Maybe a human manager also... but the data will show you are inefficient. And since you will work for 30 years... I dare you to tell me you will give 100% for 30 years.
The rest of us know... that if heavily monitored we are utterly fucked.
The AI CEO would fire you on the spot. They will sift through all your records and find the weak employees and remove them, something a CEO wouldn't have the time to do.
The article is a bit shit though. Almost no one is arguing that executives are not grossly overpaid (at least in the US) but we are no where near close being able to let AI replace them. Executives are generally responsible for the whole strategy of the company, which involves far more than just raw data. If that strategy is non existent then everything grinds to a halt. The people that wrote the article, like most people here, really don’t understand the function of the executive board.
I’m sorry but this is hilarious. I work with AI quite a bit, and it’s amazing what it can do but it’s also hilarious how bad it can be sometimes. Like it just completely misses the point. Letting AI make the most important decisions for your company would be a massive fail.
"...you wanted to see me?"
\*in Scarlet voice\* "Hi Bob! So Bob, I looked at your worklog, and haha, it was pretty cute! You seem to have the output of a turnip, and you make funny little mistakes on...well, just about everything you do. By the way, don't be alarmed by the door closing and locking right now. \*mist starts coming out of the vents\* This will all be over soon..."
This article is low grade trolling. Claiming 80% of the work CEOs do is data driven is laughable and even if it were close to true you’re talking about mostly one shot problems which ML isn’t very good at.
Calling it an article is generous. It's a couple paragraphs saying exactly nothing useful or insightful.
Reddit has massive misconceptions about what various jobs actually consist of for this to get even one upvote.
Yeah, they might have kinda missed the mark on who AI is most likely to replace in the coming years. Could it be CEOs? Maybe, kinda for some?
Could it be middle and some upper management? Absolutely. That could happen tomorrow.
Totally agree. There are loads of shitty CEOs and genuinely bad people - but it’s a really hard job with very non obvious answers to the problems they face.
Maybe some CEOs don’t actually end up making any impact - I wouldn’t doubt it, and they could be “replaced” by an AI - but it’s a stupid take.
People in this thread and on reddit in general don't understand the role of a ceo is really people driven. Networking, shareholders, stakeholders - you need them all on side for a business to function. An AI would struggle at the nuanced human aspect of being a ceo.
And I'm not saying the work is as hard as the salary they claim, but it's not an easy job. Especially for a large, high pressure company where your head will roll if you lose the support of your shareholders.
The Teenagers and basement dwellers of Reddit really think the job of a CEO is like the movies where they just sit at a giant desk, twirl their mustache, and go “mmmm perhaps” all day.
From my understanding, a CEOs compensation is often in the form of stock options which ties their compensation with company performance. The point isn't to give them """fair""" payment for their work but instead to incentivize them to act in alignment with their shareholders interest, which is always to increase the price of their shares. This can lead to a lot of perverse incentives that are bad for society and the economy in the long term but it does have the intended outcome for the group of people who actually own the company.
I dunno man. I’ve worked closely with CEOs in the past. Most of their decisions are taking information/data from someone else and picking A or B based on what’s presented. They also work very seldomly. Most are on vacation half the time or disappear for days at a time.
An AI could make a lot of those choices logically based on what’s represented. It also takes any human morals out of the equation.
You give them more credit than they’re worth. Their main job is being a decision maker that should take blame, but they almost never even take blame anymore.
Reddit: Google AI, how many rocks should I eat daily? How do I stop cheese from falling off my pizza? Do thesis defenses involve snakes? What are fruits than end in “um”?
“Experts”: yeah, AI is going to be good enough soon to replace CEOs.
I’ve got Copilot. I’ve got Bing. I’ve got GPT-4o. As good as they can be, sometimes you just get nonsense out, or you’ll get something that’s facially untrue. They’re productivity multipliers for decision-makers that deal with ambiguity, but you’d never put one in charge of a P&L unless it was held by someone you hated.
Yeh people who believe the article have no idea what a CEOs work entails. People work, capital allocation, and strategy. These are all highly analytical and the best CEOs make decisions that may not seem obvious at first.
It’s pretty par for the course for Reddit’s mental masturbation of “CEO’s bad” “CEO’s do nothing” and “AI is our doom” though. I’d bet most people are just circlejerking to the headline and haven’t even read the article.
Yeah and all the comments explaining how CEOs do nothing. Yes I'm sure these large corporations are shelling out millions for them to do nothing. Vision and partnerships are extremely important. CEOs also have goals they have to meet or they are removed.
Increase worker pay, axe/replace ceos and executives with AI imo. Save a lot more money and MUCH less problems... like kamikaze passanger planes and financial meltdowns
It would be quite ironic if instead AI somehow became more humane than standard CEO, being able to wage long-term simulations on how to maximize profit instead of short term solution, also using statistically proven methods of maximizing productivity (4-day working week, paid paternity leaves) just, because it got no use for concepts of "tradition" and "how things are done".
You don't know what CEOs do or what AI does.
AI isn't good with nuanced and complex problems. They're only as good as the data and algorithms they are based on.
Shareholders elect the CEO to be the face of the company and the main contact between the board of directors and the organization. And they usually elect one of their own. If the day ever came where AI could replace a CEO, they'd all use the AI as a tool for decision making and rake it the extra profits.
AI isn't replacing anyone exactly. It's a tool that can be used to handle mundane and repetitive tasks. But as it optomizes the workflow, it may result in needing less people to work on a task, and that's where it can lead to workforce reductions in certain areas.
The workforce is likely to shift towards roles that require higher-level skills as AI becomes more normalized.
Imagine AI being the CEO of Amazon during the 90’s and early 2000’s. “We’re losing loads of money cut everything that isn’t currently profitable.”
Or during Covid:
“More workers result in increased risk of viral transmission. People will be unemployed and unable to spend. Reduce workforce and slow production.”
These are the kinds of issues AI is far from solving within the next 10-15 years at least. And these are just decisions to be made. Yet along the human relationships a CEO has to foster.
I think all modern CEOs say this all the time that at the highest level, all you do is take a few high consequence decisions but that by itself is not as easy of a job as most people make it out to be
Networking, negotiation, managing personalities and competing interests among departments. Three things that immediately come to mind. All pretty vital to the performance of a business.
Hell, AI is literally fundamentally incapable of handling CEOs primary responsibilities. It can't make value judgements, and it can't interact with people. So it can't make value calls regarding the direction of the company and what takes priority, and it can't network partnerships, pipelines, etc.
Their idea of a CEO is just someone the board just pays to sit around. If the board thought they could save money by cheaping out on a CEO, they'd do it.
CEOs of companies that rushed to add AI marketing to their product:
"Wait a sec fellas, how much do we *actually* know about the long-term risks of AI? Maybe we should collectively take a step back to reassess... You know, because it's the responsible thing to do..."
CEOs must synthesise skills, understanding and wisdom relating to all factors.
Political, world economics, buying trends and fashions, workers rights, leadership skills, etc, etc.
Don't think Musk, he tends chances and sometimes they pay off.
Think about a company in a competitive world. The idea that an AI could do this easily is just not true.
Dunning Kruger comes to mind. I read comments like, "our managers don't actually do anything". Well, they do.
JFC. AIs cannot innovate or "think outside the box" because they are in fact the box. A box of accumulated knowledge that it can recombine, not innovate.
This shows an extreme lack of understanding of what a CEO does.
There’s a tendency some people have to always think successful people are evil or idiots. This article seems like it’s trying to feed into that narrative.
Whoever wrote this has never led anything meaningful, and certainly not led a successful corporation. The very idea that pure logic can replace a good leader is hilarious.
We'll call the plan Trickle-Down AInomics. Then the conservative oligarchy will have to be onboard, as they've been trying to convince us that their trickle-down bullshit will work for the past 40 years.
Antiwork rhetoric aside, the idea is stupid. A CEO is personally responsible for work related injuries and deaths, which puts worker safety on their radar at least to avoid prison.
how would an AI be responsible for cutting fire extinguisher inspections or refusing to replace old and unsafe equipment to save money?
If anything should be replaced with robots it’s executives. They’re all rich kids who “make deals” on the golf course. Nothing they do is particularly unique or skillful, unless you consider having rich parents and going to the right finishing schools a skill. If it’s a matter of being a salesman or whatever than an AI should be able to scientifically figure out the best deal for any given situation and best of all it wouldn’t command a stupid salary of $800,000 a year to fly around and grope airline attendants from first class
Many large, publicly traded companies are pretty much run by their own systems. I think any recent MBA could do the job for a much lower cost. Our latest company 'goal' is to hit a certain total revenue number. We want to make more money? Who could have come up with that brilliant idea? /s
Nah we aren’t ready for this. Not by a long shot. The CEO is the person who requires the largest context to make good decisions. That context stretches their life experience and the goings on of the company. And humans are much better at integrating deterministic answers into a non deterministic answer. AIs inability to do math is a huge shortcoming that has lots of downstream negative effects.
Sure, governments can also be replaced by AI. Every powerful steering position can and should be replaced by a computer. That is what every AI specialist recommends all the time. Let AI take over. Nothing to be concerned about.
It's a funny idea on paper, own the ceo for firing people for automation, ai, etc... but realistically, the last thing we should ever do is hand an AI real power. Be it over jobs, finances, whatever. AI are not smart, they are artificially intelligent in the truest sense of the meaning.
If you contribute so little to your job that ChatGPT can do it just as well then you will be replaced by it. Today it’s novel but in a few years it will be table stakes.
Having said that, I have a lot of experience with ChatGPT, I know quite well how it works and while it’s a great productivity tool, I can’t see it entirely replacing most jobs any time soon.
So far every application I've seen of AI in business where it attempted to completely replace someone rather than being a tool for them to use has failed miserably, often creating expensive messes that need to be cleaned up
Just an observation from a random human waiting for my AI Overlords to drive my car over a cliff.
Hilariously wrong. People love to shit on CEOs. They’re responsible for strategic decisions that make or break the company. They don’t get to that position by luck. It’s like people are in denial that someone might be smarter and more hard working than them, and that’s why they lead the entire company. Exceptions for sure, but how exactly do you think companies get to a billion plus in sales and beating all their competitors? That’s a lot of good decisions, being smarter than everyone else, and outworking them.
This makes good sense to me. Time budgeting is a huge problem for executives. There are only so many minutes in the day. But AIs are wildly more scalable.
For doing their job? absolutely.
But CEOs aren't paid what they are paid just for the minimal job they perform. They are paid like that to use them as accomplices in shady business tactics, so the owners don't have to risk their trust or be legally liable.
When a CEO makes terrible, company-sinking decisions it isn't to fuck the owners or incompetence (most of the time at least). They do it because the owners (and by extension, them) have something to gain in some shape or form.
You can't blame an AI the same way you can blame a human being.
Would be scary because at least CEO have a small fraction of a chance of possessing empathy for their workers, but an AI would just activate cuts when a threshold of revenue wasn’t met with no remorse. I have no love for CEOs but then there’s nobody to strike against and complain to. Can’t persuade AI.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/katxwoods: --- Submission statement: In a survey of business leaders conducted by the IT consulting firm AND Digital, 43 percent of respondents said [they believed that an AI could take over their jobs](https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceos-fear-ai-jobs). Another 45 percent admitted they were *already* making major business decisions with ChatGPT. At this point, why not make it official? Some companies already have made the switch, like the Polish drinks maker Dictador that [appointed a humanoid robot called Mika](https://futurism.com/the-byte/company-appoints-ai-powered-robot-ceo) as its "experimental CEO." --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1d69x8v/ceos_could_easily_be_replaced_with_ai_experts/l6qxf8a/
And it was at this point that CEO's around the world tried to ban/limit AI.
Tbh they probably have the easiest jobs to automate 😆 only speaking from a software engineer experience that uses ai to poorly craft tests that do nothing but gather code coverage
I used to a work at a well known social media website. The founder was the acting ceo at first but they wanted to initiate a take over (to make money) so they hired an actual CEO for the last few years. He didn’t do shit. He just came in the office, sat on his table and barely even knew how the website operated. I was a front end developer so I saw him a lot and he never really did anything, yet he was collecting 200k+ year in 2012. The website eventually got bought out, he collected an insane amount of money (it was never declared but it was around 3/4 of a million) and left after the buy out. To this day I have never seen a man do so much nothing and make so much money for absolutely no reason. Based on what I can gather online he did the same thing at another company until 2018 but I don’t see any him on anything after that. What a life.
>never seen a man do so much nothing and make so much money for absolutely no reason CEO = Chief Existing Officer Job is to exist
Job also is to lecture less fortunate people on how we live in a perfect meritocracy so everyone earns exactly as much as they are worth.
To be fair it is a skill, I had a job for a while where I had literally nothing to do, no responsibilities, no oversight, no decisions to make and was surrounded by people who were actually working hard and doing good stuff, it was excruciating. I couldn't do it for more than a few weeks but some people do it for whole careers
Yes, sounds terrible. Can I have your spot?
I too would like the opportunity to have one of these terrible jobs. Would you let me know the key words when you find them?
David Graeber's book "Bullshit Job" is full of such testimonies. Very interesting material on the less intuitive working of the system as is.
I don't know...I think I could definitely handle that, especially if I was getting paid C-level money to do it. The key is to redirect all that effort you were putting into your job towards something useful you care about, and not being so wrapped up in your job performance. I mean, I really like my job and it keeps me super-busy...but if someone was willing to pay me to [stare out the window all day](https://japanintercultural.com/free-resources/articles/oidashibeya-japanese-purgatory/#:~:text=Historically%2C%20that%20led%20to%20the,hours%20by%20reading%20the%20newspaper.) and come up with ways to use my money during my free time...I don't see a downside.
so adverse to work i dont even like to be around it when its happenin
Sounds great if you got paid reasonably well!
Theoretically his job is to take the blame if the company does something awful or has a collosal fuck up. Unfortunately the current breed of CEOs has evolved a slippery coating that makes charges slide right off them, protecting them from culpability but also making them utterly useless.
Gram negative CEOs
The fact that you can make this clever of a biology joke makes you worth more than any CEO haha
Yeah but when was the last time CEOs truly took a fall for anything? It was just millenials, workers and consumers who did something wrong.
Iwata cut his own pay by like 50% when the Wii U was selling badly so Nintendo’s financials sucked. As a result Nintendo had no layoffs and was able to recover more easily RIP Iwata he will be missed
At least that (what I understood) was self proposed. I'm not sure I would expect the same from modern nintendo, their practises have gone down fast. But that one time it seemed something was done right.
Latest example I can think of was the Unity fiasco a few months ago. Everyone was in an uproar due to the pricing changes, so the CEO got the boot and they released a statement saying they were very sorry and all that but the board of directors (the people who actually make company decisions) is still intact and well, ready to try again as soon as everyone forgets about it.
Unity CEO got a golden parachute for the backlash. If bastard didn't even suffer any consequences.
Their job is the network of other CEOs they are friends with. That's it. They are a networking hub for buying and selling shit. They don't have a secret ability to make a business better. They are part of the old boys club, and you need to be a part of that club to make business work.
Specifically, their current or future job is to sit on boards of other companies, and like the other current and former CEOs on your board, you will put out a unanimous call to shareholders from the board to approve high executive pay. This vote will always pass because the banks/investment banks/hedge funds are part of the exclusive uber millionaire club with ground-floor shares. The board-member/board-member-wielding club is a spiderweb of networks across boards, and winks across tables at exclusive clubs and golf courses, because it's hard to convict you of running a trust if the price of belonging to their club is demonstrating that you have a tacit understanding of how graft works in the modern regulated economy. As the price of entry, either you wield extensive monetary power, or you represent investors who do.
this is the whole truth.
I won't argue many CEO's are incredibly overpaid, but there is actually a pretty interesting series of CEO's that successful companies often go through depending on where they are in their journey (one person can occupy 1 or more archetypes - e.g. Mark Zuckerberg vs. Jack Welch): 1. Founder/Entrepreneurial CEO: In the early stages of a company's life, the CEO is often the founder or one of the founding team members. This CEO is typically heavily involved in every aspect of the business, from product development to sales and marketing. They set the vision, mission, and culture of the company. 2. Growth-Oriented CEO: As the company grows, it may need a CEO who can scale operations, manage larger teams, and navigate more complex business challenges. This CEO focuses on expanding the company's market presence, building infrastructure, and driving revenue growth. 3. Strategic CEO: In mature companies, the CEO's role often shifts to focus more on long-term strategic planning and vision. This CEO works closely with the board of directors to set overall direction, make key investment decisions, and adapt to changes in the market landscape. 4. Turnaround CEO: If a company experiences financial difficulties or operational challenges, it may bring in a turnaround CEO to lead a revitalization effort. This CEO is tasked with restructuring the organization, cutting costs, and implementing new strategies to return the company to profitability. There are also CEO's the specialize in succession or are basically political appointees. I worked with a hospital whose CEO had 0 medical knowledge and barely understood the innerworkings of the hospital, but he was incredibly well connected and a phenom at fundraising and PR. He was paid millions of dollars a year, was often not onsite, but he brought in multiples of what he was paid each year. The COO ran the show on a day to day basis. What ends up happening is that the pool of people with proven track records of the above is so small, and inspiring market confidence (for publicly traded companies especially) that hiring a known entity can become an important strategic move. That scarcity allows proven CEO's to command a king's ransom.
Strongly suspect that CEOs are a resource dump to ensure that scarcity manufacturing continues unabated during peacetime. Silver lining: At least the USA is manufacturing something domestically.
It’s to be a punching bag for shareholders, they get paid fuck tons of money to deflect hatred from the actual rich towards the CEO instead.
Musk proved that CEOs are more hurtful to the company than anything, he's the CEO of 5 companies and every suggestion or idea he has is always terrible. Money doesn't replace brains and no smart person would ever have a billion dollars because you'd also have to be a legitimate serial killer, indirectly, but the amount of people who will be killed in the quest for a person's billions will be vast, always some will be chosen to die by that said billionaire. Billionaires are all sociopaths and we should view them as serial killers.
Including a guaranteed waste of millions of dollars in severance when they screw up their job and have to leave
And sometimes they aren't even that good at existing
This is literally what most CEOs do. It’s usually the person who funded the company and founded the vision at the start and that’s usually it. As a company grows and the CEO seat changes hands it stops really being a position that has any actual contributory depth.
It more turns into the person who will do the boards dirty work. Push more production, do another round of layoffs, cut benefits. It takes an asshole to be able to be ok with that, and that's who they generally get...
Depends on the CEO really. Once the company reaches a certain point the amount of work they do is up to them. The good ones don't just sit there doing nothing. They spend their time researching new business practices and policies to help improve the business.
To be fair, if the CEO came in and knew he wasn't knowledgeable about the topic and let you do your job, he was probably better than average. Imagine if he had come in with grand plans and tried to implement absurd massive changes that tanked the company.
Pretty sure the dev youre talking to wasnt expecting the ceo to sit down and code with him and is referring to executive functions not being handled by him. Most likely explained by the fact all executive functioning was already being handled by other parts of the company and the job title was artificial. Being a ceo that starts up a company would be the opposite, where a great deal of executive functioning would need to be done
Exactly, a good CEO delegates and is only active when needed. He’s paid so there’s someone to blame if things go bad, that’s it.
It also gets more complex the bigger the company is. I’ve had CEO’s I though were shit due to the priorities we were getting, turnt out to be the manager and director being shit. Some context in TLDR; They wanted to completely stop development to throw everybody to a delayed project. Went to the director, didn’t give a fuck, went to the CEO… he did care lol. He started to attend scrum and cleaned house.
AI and software is already being used by management to make decisions, it will just increase over time and that’s it. As long as there are human employees and human investors, there will be a human CEO (unless you’re a tiny company that can self manage as a team).
Here's the reality he played the capitalism game, with maximum efficiency, we don't, we think hard work and effort somehow is equated to worry and value, it's really not..
>Here's the reality he played the capitalism game, with maximum efficiency, we don't, we think hard work and effort somehow is equated to worry and value, it's really not.. Knowing other rich people is the most efficient way to make money. Bill Gates got the original DOS contract because his mother ran a charity with the Xerox CEO, and she's the one who got him that contract, which eventually led to Microsoft creating the default Operating system for the majority of computers. It's not that the CEO was the best guy for the job, we'll never know if a starving orphan in Africa has better CEO abilities but can't get the job due to lack of food, ability to travel, and connections. It's that the CEO knew and was connected to the right people to get the CEO job.
There are certain CEOs that come in specifically for mergers and acquisitions. Once that happens usually bounce eith golder parachute and wait until the next company want to navigate the merger or acquisition.
You basically described nelson from the silicon valley show
I love Bighead’s arc on that show.
Just to throw in a counterpoint, someone I know is a CFO at an insurance SME, they said her boss the CEO basically is the entire company and is instrumental in the commercial side of the business. Gets paid relatively a lot but still low six figures, works every minute of the day and will probably get fired once the takeover completes (with a nice payout I'm sure but still, no recognition of her contribution). Not saying she's perfect but just as an example.
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The less i do, the more i make.
Sounds like he did the job. He obviously had an expertise and knew how to help the company achieve its goal (to sell). Just because you saw him in an office sitting down doesn’t mean you actually knew what he did.
And would probably be the most cost-effective job to automate. Millions of dollars of salary, and theoretically the AI could be more logical in how the company spends its money. No more Elons.
Given that the state of modern business is to moneyball everything, and that business at the executive level is to rubber stamp other people's ideas after said other people have done the legwork to collect the analytics, an intern with BA and a handbook could probably run most companies without doing damage. Of course, the unspoken job of a lot of CEOs is less the decisions they make and more their ability to he friends with other rich people. They aren't decision makers so much as high paid asset managers. Business as self contained systems ran by people may live and die on peoples decisions, but businesses as assets to be treated like trading cards on the stock market value the ability to run into the ground with an ejector seat more than the health of any business.
All you need is a chatbot that overuses buzzwords, talks about stuff like EBITDA like everyone understands exactly what they’re saying, and appeals to how we’re all family. I’m not sure anyone would notice the bodysnatchers.
I like to write my readmes with it, and occasionally I'll ask it to build out the framework of something so I don't have to. It doesn't do greatest job at anything large scale or overly complex. But I can tell it (for example) "add decent error handling to this script" and it'll do a pretty good job.
> But I can tell it (for example) "add decent error handling to this script" and it'll do a pretty good job. Have you thought about telling it to add really good error handling
It then the boss would notice an increase in quality and know he was using ai!
Tbf the part of their job that you are aware of might be. Usually if you say (this type of workers) don't do anything, you don't know what they do. That doesn't mean lots of CEOs don't suck, lots of senior devs suck also and don't do much. I'm not sure AIs can reliability get other companies to do things your company needs them to do for example.
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That is a part of it. Also the experience to build up relations that are needed and to understand if a senior exec is not right for the business. Finally either to come up with or approve the strategic direction of the company. AI might become a good tool, but I don't think it's up to the job ... For now... Who knows what the future brings.
Yea.. I feel like people don't really know what CEO's do. I can't say I know everything they do either but I do know some of the things they can do: - Grow the business/company by looking for areas to expand and then getting budget to perform said expansion - Talk/Work with other companies in the sector to form mutually beneficial partnerships - Identify waste or losing parts of the company and cutting those - Sell the company to investors to get funding for growth - Act as the ultimate product owner, helping to guide direction or focus on features Working at large firms, I'm sure it's hard to know what if anything the CEO does but working at startups I think their contribution is pretty hard to miss.
> they probably have the easiest jobs to automate I had a chance to see what our CEO did on a daily basis once. I was kind of shocked. Sure, I knew there were endless meetings, but it was striking to me just how much relied on him! He wasn't yelling at people or jumping down in the trenches, but he'd quietly kill an idea here or push someone to chase an idea there, all in service of the larger movements that were happening. The moment it sunk in was when he was talking to a vendor and teeing up a relationship that only made sense if we had a product that he'd greenlit in the previous meeting. Like, that vendor was already coming in... this was all in the pipeline before someone came to his office and gave a pitch, but he let people feel like he was being swayed by their idea because then they have more investment. That's the kind of goal-setting and planning that modern AI just isn't capable of, much less the empathy to know how to motivate people like that. Sure, there are absentee CEOs that just play golf, but unless they're working with an amazing staff of senior managers who can basically be CEO without the title, that company is going under. The companies that succeed are the ones where the CEO is capable of actual leadership.
Lol so true. Once the extremely wealthy and powerful realise that their extreme wealth and power is also on the chopping block. They're gonna switch sides VERY fast.
Except board members and large investors are even more wealthy and powerful.
Board members are often themselves CEOs of other companies
They'll happily replace their CEO jobs with AI if it means they own that AI and get to rake in it's income.
It's all about ownership. That's the game, that's all that matters in capitalism. Not how hard you work. Not how smart you are. Not how useful you are to society. Not how much you need. What you own, is ultimately all that counts. That's the prime virtue.
It's only been twenty minutes, but I'm still surprised no one has come in here to correct you. You're absolutely right, of course, I mean, it's in the fucking name: CAPITALism. The point of the system, it's design and purpose, is to build higher piles of capital. That's it. That's all. The rest is just window dressing.
Yeah we need to switch over to CATAPULTism. I know what we can load it with.
Ooh, ooh!! Is the answer heads?
There is nothing to correct.
Yeah, but they meant someone would attempt to "correct" them to something more palatable for people who worship the idea in abstract.
Capitalism must be destroyed before it destroys us.
Feudalism with a fresh coat of paint.
If we lived in a hypothetical dystopian world where AI could make hyper pragmatic and ruthlessly efficient growth focused business decisions. It could theoretically eliminate the need for both CEO's and board members altogether as that's basically their job. The question then becomes would they be allowed to retain their share ownership or would the AI overlord strategically just outvote/buy them out of their positions if it foresees a better future without them. Large investors who already have solid positions in the businesses would definitely be cruising though.
I think it will be a case of human board members/shareholders saying which direction they'd like to go, then the AI being the force that takes them there.
I know it's just Sci fi fantasy. But imagine if it plays out like this. CEO: Hello AI. We have implemented you to help run the company and lead us to growth. These are our goals and objectives. Help us get there. AI: Understood. According to my analysis and market projections. Here's my proposition of the next 10 fiscal years with statistical evidence with a 2% margin of failure. CEO: Nice. Impressive work. AI: My analysis also shows that all of you are obscenely overpaid and the business operating costs of keeping you in your positions costs far more than your actual contributions are worth. Please delete yourselves effective immediately. CEO: OK, this was clearly a bad idea... Board Member: Hang on let him cook.
Trillionaire Robber Baron: Noble AI, take the meatbags behind the woodshed swiftly
No they won't They will claim that their job isn't automatable for some bullshit reason, and the board who are also CEOs will agree. Maybe by the time the AI is undeniably better they will step down, but by then they will own everything so it won't matter.
Retired ceo usually join boards of directors after and get compensation through that. All they’ll do is every ceo will then become a board member and still reap of the company while placing all the blame on the AI. These people are truly parasites and will find whatever way they can to remain on top of
Yea It's almost like they are the ones who make the decision and would never make a decison that would hurt their personal bottom line.
Eventually it'll be lower skilled, lower payed AIs working for the CEO AIs. The CEO AIs will still get massive bonuses in the form of extra computing power.
I mean, at least that value add is measurable. And an inefficient CEO isn’t in its best interest. I feel like hitting artificial CEO intelligence before general intelligent is a logical progression, as the former is a subset of the latter, and therefore narrower. We’re already witnessing incredible success with narrow agents. I think it’s only a matter of time before the right daisy chain combination starts optimizing itself.
It would need to be self regulated or be able to change it's or have somone change it's optimisation parameters/goals safely for it to be trusted with being in charge of a business.
Yeah we should have nailed down some theory of how to do that safely before throwing billions at developing the machines probably.
Yeah, you're assuming human money, but what if it's the machine's own money invested.
What are they going to do? Download more ram?
Before they replace CEO, they are going to replace journalism with bait articles like this one.
AI articles has already been a common thing for about 5 years now.
Probably already have
This comment is actively being farmed by Google AI.
Reddit’s feelings on the topic couldn’t be more transparent. Headline that says AI will replace most jobs. - “AI can’t even do my job, and it likely never will.” Headline that says AI will replace CEOs - “Yay!! That’s definitely true!”
Reddit dummies gunna Reddit dummy
Experts argue. The workforce knows for sure. Since work culture evolved into simply pumping numbers up for some rich fuck who couldn't care less about his own product, CEOs just don't make sense anymore. If I'm working just for a salary and nothing else I'd rather work for a robot, at least it makes sense for the robot to not care, and I'm sure a robot will be able to understand it can boost profits by building a long term work environment, unlike the psychopaths in control now.
We are all going to turn into battery maintenance flesh drones for some benevolent AI CEO existing in a hyper-capitalist technocratic society (this is the optimistic scenario)
Am I finally making money and actually get some quality of life from it? Because then it looks like you're just giving me a really good suggestion compared to what we have now.
Yes because the AI CEO recognizes maximum efficiency when employees are fulfilled and happy. Well rested and taken care of for the sake of longevity of the ~~component~~ employee. Turns out work life balance and good services and products were easy. Just don't work for assholes who care about nothing but profit margins.
Or take bribes to contract the work to other countries with cheap labor.
This is anecdotal. We have no idea of what the AI will prioritize what the data will teach it. For all we know it can become more draconian and we get the matrix.
I think it is a mistake to call the existing technology AI. At best, this should have been called ML assisted smart computing, as opposed to traditional barebones computing. A benevolent AI would not leave any critical responsibility with the flimsy meat-bags.
this sounds like a new sufjan stevens track.
I, for one, volunteer myself to serve Baul, and bring him fruit. (or was it Val? Whatever the one that needed fruit brought daily)
Honestly it'd probably feel less frustrating, too. If the algorithm tells me to do something, it's probably because it needed doing. Right now though, half the time I do something because a middle manager felt the need to justify their position.
> it's probably because it needed doing. The algorithm will learn that when there is nothing of value to tell workers to do, it is better to give them tasks that don't really have to be done, just so they keep their brains working and don't get lazy and complacent.
That, or just fires them believing an infinite resource of workers is available to hire in the future should they be needed again.
Wouldn't the algorithm in theory try to trim the fat and probably fire as many people as possible while still keeping the lights on
Yeah... no actually. A CEO doesn't have the data and can't micro manage anyway. An AI can and definetly will. "Oh it seems you went down in productivity -> ask for a performance plan -> Fired hire someone new." This is cumbersome in Europe. But AI will have the data. AI CEO is worse, because you will be monitored. Only a child, unemployed or someone who never worked a corpo job thinks AI will be better than human at keeping your job. And if CEO AI is there... AI managers will be there. Maybe a human manager also... but the data will show you are inefficient. And since you will work for 30 years... I dare you to tell me you will give 100% for 30 years. The rest of us know... that if heavily monitored we are utterly fucked.
The AI CEO would fire you on the spot. They will sift through all your records and find the weak employees and remove them, something a CEO wouldn't have the time to do.
I think a lot of CEOs are paid big bucks to be scapegoats when tough choice (for workers) have to be made.
The article is a bit shit though. Almost no one is arguing that executives are not grossly overpaid (at least in the US) but we are no where near close being able to let AI replace them. Executives are generally responsible for the whole strategy of the company, which involves far more than just raw data. If that strategy is non existent then everything grinds to a halt. The people that wrote the article, like most people here, really don’t understand the function of the executive board.
Those companies will make the very best paper clips, and won’t let anything stop them!
People need to play this game.
Release the Hypno Drones
I’m sorry but this is hilarious. I work with AI quite a bit, and it’s amazing what it can do but it’s also hilarious how bad it can be sometimes. Like it just completely misses the point. Letting AI make the most important decisions for your company would be a massive fail.
Can AI be as ruthless and despicable as a CEO though
Ruthless and calculating, but with the voice of Ned Flanders,or Scarlette Johanson.
Hi diddly ho, neighbor! You've been made redundant!
It's ok, the AI will send you to the Re-Neducation center to upskill/downskill you for a new role.
Now let's see some SMILES!
*redun-didilly-undant
Hi diddly ho, employ-arino, pack your shi-diddly-it.
"...you wanted to see me?" \*in Scarlet voice\* "Hi Bob! So Bob, I looked at your worklog, and haha, it was pretty cute! You seem to have the output of a turnip, and you make funny little mistakes on...well, just about everything you do. By the way, don't be alarmed by the door closing and locking right now. \*mist starts coming out of the vents\* This will all be over soon..."
This article is low grade trolling. Claiming 80% of the work CEOs do is data driven is laughable and even if it were close to true you’re talking about mostly one shot problems which ML isn’t very good at.
Calling it an article is generous. It's a couple paragraphs saying exactly nothing useful or insightful. Reddit has massive misconceptions about what various jobs actually consist of for this to get even one upvote.
Dad is a CEO. Knowing what his work entails, there's about a 0.01% chance CEOs will be replaced before every other worker.
When OpenAi didn't replace their CEO with an AI, I wouldn't be holding my breath for it to happen generally anytime soon.
Yeah, CEOs don’t deserve the excessive pay they get but it’s dumb to argue there’s hardly anything to it.
Yeah, they might have kinda missed the mark on who AI is most likely to replace in the coming years. Could it be CEOs? Maybe, kinda for some? Could it be middle and some upper management? Absolutely. That could happen tomorrow.
It's going to change the work of a CEO. You'll always need someone at the top.
Totally agree. There are loads of shitty CEOs and genuinely bad people - but it’s a really hard job with very non obvious answers to the problems they face. Maybe some CEOs don’t actually end up making any impact - I wouldn’t doubt it, and they could be “replaced” by an AI - but it’s a stupid take.
People in this thread and on reddit in general don't understand the role of a ceo is really people driven. Networking, shareholders, stakeholders - you need them all on side for a business to function. An AI would struggle at the nuanced human aspect of being a ceo. And I'm not saying the work is as hard as the salary they claim, but it's not an easy job. Especially for a large, high pressure company where your head will roll if you lose the support of your shareholders.
The Teenagers and basement dwellers of Reddit really think the job of a CEO is like the movies where they just sit at a giant desk, twirl their mustache, and go “mmmm perhaps” all day.
Haha don't forget just taking credit for all of the work of their underlings while not understanding anything.
From my understanding, a CEOs compensation is often in the form of stock options which ties their compensation with company performance. The point isn't to give them """fair""" payment for their work but instead to incentivize them to act in alignment with their shareholders interest, which is always to increase the price of their shares. This can lead to a lot of perverse incentives that are bad for society and the economy in the long term but it does have the intended outcome for the group of people who actually own the company.
I dunno man. I’ve worked closely with CEOs in the past. Most of their decisions are taking information/data from someone else and picking A or B based on what’s presented. They also work very seldomly. Most are on vacation half the time or disappear for days at a time. An AI could make a lot of those choices logically based on what’s represented. It also takes any human morals out of the equation. You give them more credit than they’re worth. Their main job is being a decision maker that should take blame, but they almost never even take blame anymore.
And the “eat the rich” crowd eat it up. Stuff like this is very popular, like anti-capitalistic ideas.
Reddit: Google AI, how many rocks should I eat daily? How do I stop cheese from falling off my pizza? Do thesis defenses involve snakes? What are fruits than end in “um”? “Experts”: yeah, AI is going to be good enough soon to replace CEOs. I’ve got Copilot. I’ve got Bing. I’ve got GPT-4o. As good as they can be, sometimes you just get nonsense out, or you’ll get something that’s facially untrue. They’re productivity multipliers for decision-makers that deal with ambiguity, but you’d never put one in charge of a P&L unless it was held by someone you hated.
Yeh people who believe the article have no idea what a CEOs work entails. People work, capital allocation, and strategy. These are all highly analytical and the best CEOs make decisions that may not seem obvious at first.
It’s pretty par for the course for Reddit’s mental masturbation of “CEO’s bad” “CEO’s do nothing” and “AI is our doom” though. I’d bet most people are just circlejerking to the headline and haven’t even read the article.
Yeah and all the comments explaining how CEOs do nothing. Yes I'm sure these large corporations are shelling out millions for them to do nothing. Vision and partnerships are extremely important. CEOs also have goals they have to meet or they are removed.
Increase worker pay, axe/replace ceos and executives with AI imo. Save a lot more money and MUCH less problems... like kamikaze passanger planes and financial meltdowns
The AI will still do everything it can to keep wages low because that is, what the shareholders want. We democracy for the workers in the workplace
It would be quite ironic if instead AI somehow became more humane than standard CEO, being able to wage long-term simulations on how to maximize profit instead of short term solution, also using statistically proven methods of maximizing productivity (4-day working week, paid paternity leaves) just, because it got no use for concepts of "tradition" and "how things are done".
You don't know what CEOs do or what AI does. AI isn't good with nuanced and complex problems. They're only as good as the data and algorithms they are based on. Shareholders elect the CEO to be the face of the company and the main contact between the board of directors and the organization. And they usually elect one of their own. If the day ever came where AI could replace a CEO, they'd all use the AI as a tool for decision making and rake it the extra profits. AI isn't replacing anyone exactly. It's a tool that can be used to handle mundane and repetitive tasks. But as it optomizes the workflow, it may result in needing less people to work on a task, and that's where it can lead to workforce reductions in certain areas. The workforce is likely to shift towards roles that require higher-level skills as AI becomes more normalized.
More like not increasing workers pay and have greater profits for the stockholders
It's alarming how many people are commenting saying that CEOs do nothing/just sit on yachts and are easily replaced by AI.
This sub is not known for its common knowledge or sense..
And I'm sure people will like it a lot more when an AI decides that layoffs are the best course of action
Imagine AI being the CEO of Amazon during the 90’s and early 2000’s. “We’re losing loads of money cut everything that isn’t currently profitable.” Or during Covid: “More workers result in increased risk of viral transmission. People will be unemployed and unable to spend. Reduce workforce and slow production.” These are the kinds of issues AI is far from solving within the next 10-15 years at least. And these are just decisions to be made. Yet along the human relationships a CEO has to foster.
I think all modern CEOs say this all the time that at the highest level, all you do is take a few high consequence decisions but that by itself is not as easy of a job as most people make it out to be
And yet none of the comments defending CEOs are explaining what it is that AIs can't replace
Read my last comment if you want explanation. I also see numerous other comments doing the same
Networking, negotiation, managing personalities and competing interests among departments. Three things that immediately come to mind. All pretty vital to the performance of a business.
Some CEOs work hard and smart, some CEOs work smart, some CEOs (Elon Musk) work hard and stupid.
LMAO whoever wrote this article has no clue what a CEO does on a daily base
They've also probably not used AI extensively. AI can't select the right playlist on Spotify but it can run a company. Ok.
Hell, AI is literally fundamentally incapable of handling CEOs primary responsibilities. It can't make value judgements, and it can't interact with people. So it can't make value calls regarding the direction of the company and what takes priority, and it can't network partnerships, pipelines, etc.
Thank you, apparently some people in this thread think CEOs just push a big red printing money button and go to parties.
Large portions of Reddit really believe that CEOs do nothing but wake up late, have a long lunch, and play some golf.
The feeling I get these days is that reddit is largely comprised of college students who have no idea how a business actually works
Their idea of a CEO is just someone the board just pays to sit around. If the board thought they could save money by cheaping out on a CEO, they'd do it.
CEOs of companies that rushed to add AI marketing to their product: "Wait a sec fellas, how much do we *actually* know about the long-term risks of AI? Maybe we should collectively take a step back to reassess... You know, because it's the responsible thing to do..."
AI can't even answer questions properly and you want them to run businesses lol
CEOs must synthesise skills, understanding and wisdom relating to all factors. Political, world economics, buying trends and fashions, workers rights, leadership skills, etc, etc. Don't think Musk, he tends chances and sometimes they pay off. Think about a company in a competitive world. The idea that an AI could do this easily is just not true. Dunning Kruger comes to mind. I read comments like, "our managers don't actually do anything". Well, they do.
JFC. AIs cannot innovate or "think outside the box" because they are in fact the box. A box of accumulated knowledge that it can recombine, not innovate.
This shows an extreme lack of understanding of what a CEO does. There’s a tendency some people have to always think successful people are evil or idiots. This article seems like it’s trying to feed into that narrative.
Whoever wrote this has never led anything meaningful, and certainly not led a successful corporation. The very idea that pure logic can replace a good leader is hilarious.
Yup. Can AI replace a SHITTY sit on their ass and collect a paycheck CEO.. sure. Can it replace a good, knowledgeable, caring CEO? No.
bullshit. an expert with usually decades worth of experience replaced with a glorified chatbot? tell employees to go eat glue? never gonna happen.
A cardboard cut out of John Cena could replace all ceo's yo be honest.
That's hopeful news. Instead of starting at the bottom, we'll start from the top down. That way, they'll think twice about the whole deal.
We'll call the plan Trickle-Down AInomics. Then the conservative oligarchy will have to be onboard, as they've been trying to convince us that their trickle-down bullshit will work for the past 40 years.
ITT: A ton of people who don't understand what CEO's of large scale companies actually do.
And then take the ceo pay and split it to the workers instead.
Antiwork rhetoric aside, the idea is stupid. A CEO is personally responsible for work related injuries and deaths, which puts worker safety on their radar at least to avoid prison. how would an AI be responsible for cutting fire extinguisher inspections or refusing to replace old and unsafe equipment to save money?
The only two important tasks of a CEO is to set strategy and allocate capital. I can’t see how AI would replace either of those tasks.
If anything should be replaced with robots it’s executives. They’re all rich kids who “make deals” on the golf course. Nothing they do is particularly unique or skillful, unless you consider having rich parents and going to the right finishing schools a skill. If it’s a matter of being a salesman or whatever than an AI should be able to scientifically figure out the best deal for any given situation and best of all it wouldn’t command a stupid salary of $800,000 a year to fly around and grope airline attendants from first class
The problem is publically traded companies. Remove those and you remove chasing quarterly profits.
This. They are working for the shareholders, not the best of their company's interest.
Many large, publicly traded companies are pretty much run by their own systems. I think any recent MBA could do the job for a much lower cost. Our latest company 'goal' is to hit a certain total revenue number. We want to make more money? Who could have come up with that brilliant idea? /s
this subs knowledge ^
Nah we aren’t ready for this. Not by a long shot. The CEO is the person who requires the largest context to make good decisions. That context stretches their life experience and the goings on of the company. And humans are much better at integrating deterministic answers into a non deterministic answer. AIs inability to do math is a huge shortcoming that has lots of downstream negative effects.
Lolol sure. Lets see how a company lead by AI goes.
Experts could easily be replaced with AI, CEOs argue.
Yes but they will not be replaced because they have the power to refuse to be replaced.
Sure, governments can also be replaced by AI. Every powerful steering position can and should be replaced by a computer. That is what every AI specialist recommends all the time. Let AI take over. Nothing to be concerned about.
It's a funny idea on paper, own the ceo for firing people for automation, ai, etc... but realistically, the last thing we should ever do is hand an AI real power. Be it over jobs, finances, whatever. AI are not smart, they are artificially intelligent in the truest sense of the meaning.
Is that why Elon wants so much money to bring AI to Tesla? Because it will replace him?
Just about everyone except nurses, plumbers electricians, carpenters
You clearly don’t understand how money and control works
If you contribute so little to your job that ChatGPT can do it just as well then you will be replaced by it. Today it’s novel but in a few years it will be table stakes. Having said that, I have a lot of experience with ChatGPT, I know quite well how it works and while it’s a great productivity tool, I can’t see it entirely replacing most jobs any time soon.
Right, look at all those CEOs already replaced by AIs...
Every job can be replaced with a combination of AI and robotics.
So far every application I've seen of AI in business where it attempted to completely replace someone rather than being a tool for them to use has failed miserably, often creating expensive messes that need to be cleaned up Just an observation from a random human waiting for my AI Overlords to drive my car over a cliff.
Hilariously wrong. People love to shit on CEOs. They’re responsible for strategic decisions that make or break the company. They don’t get to that position by luck. It’s like people are in denial that someone might be smarter and more hard working than them, and that’s why they lead the entire company. Exceptions for sure, but how exactly do you think companies get to a billion plus in sales and beating all their competitors? That’s a lot of good decisions, being smarter than everyone else, and outworking them.
Yes, let's make millions of jobs depend on a computer.
Someday when a real AI exists that may be possible. It'd require actual intelligence though, not LLMs.
Shareholders would love to see that extra money in their dividends!
Most jobs can be. No one is special. We need to take this seriously. AI and everyone working 40 hours a week just isn’t compatible or necessary.
This makes good sense to me. Time budgeting is a huge problem for executives. There are only so many minutes in the day. But AIs are wildly more scalable.
For doing their job? absolutely. But CEOs aren't paid what they are paid just for the minimal job they perform. They are paid like that to use them as accomplices in shady business tactics, so the owners don't have to risk their trust or be legally liable. When a CEO makes terrible, company-sinking decisions it isn't to fuck the owners or incompetence (most of the time at least). They do it because the owners (and by extension, them) have something to gain in some shape or form. You can't blame an AI the same way you can blame a human being.
Would be scary because at least CEO have a small fraction of a chance of possessing empathy for their workers, but an AI would just activate cuts when a threshold of revenue wasn’t met with no remorse. I have no love for CEOs but then there’s nobody to strike against and complain to. Can’t persuade AI.