The easiest job to replace must be the CEO.
Look at Musk. He's CEO of six companies (or so), yet has time to run DOGE and constantly post on X.
The easiest job to replace must be the CEO.
Look at Musk. He's CEO of six companies (or so), yet has time to run DOGE and constantly post on X.
The most fundamental duty of a CEO is to accept responsibility away from the board members, hence the large bonuses when they are let go. By definition, AI cannot do this. End of conversation.
Same goes for managers in most cases. Firing people because an AI said to simply won't hold ip in court, at least for now.
> accept responsibility
When was the last time a CEO went to jail because of illegal activities committed by the company? There is no responsibility.
If the "responsibility" is "you become rich, and if you get fired we give you a huge bonus on top", then I'm pretty sure anyone would be happy to take it.
Being a CEO is like being a politician. You need to convince others that they need you even if they don't, or you're incompetent, or you serve other interests. It's not what it takes to "lead a company", it's what it takes to "get the highly-paid job".
In the US, this happens hundreds or thousands of times per year. The last major CEO was probably more recent, but you have high profile CEOs in Sam Bankman-Freid, Elizabeth Holmes, and Ken Lay. In fact, after Enron, CEOs and CFOs took on significantly more responsibility and risk by being personally liable for the financial statements. CEOs are arrested all of the time, so I’m not sure I understand your point.
That's only a "risk" if the organisation is doing illegal things which are driven by leadership. CEOs are not arrested for law breaking they had nothing to do with.
"some of you might die, but it's a risk I'm willing to take" - CEO handbook quote (only slightly paraphrased). This is all the risk there is for a CEO, change my mind.
I mentioned this to someone the other day, and they rebuffed that part of what you get with a CEO is their network and their ability to network. AI won't replace that, at least not anytime soon.
A recent WSJ article pointed out that 50% of board members are ex-CEOs.
I think CEO networking is code for cartels & collusion.
I think it is the layers of muddle management that could easily be replaced by AI.
Why are we proactively trying to recreate System Shock?
I think this is true. There was an article on HN the other day about how Moderna has already re-organized its leadership structure around AI.
It makes sense to me that AI could conceivably already be as good at making the hard, data-based decisions that CEOs make, and that, therefore, they could one day be replaced by AI. Meanwhile, you've got the soft skills part of being an executive, which humans are better at (as long as the people they deal with are also humans). So, you could split that CEO role into two parts, each specializing in half of what a CEO today does. Both roles would probably do a better job than the median CEO today, and get paid less overall.
But that "not anytime soon" part is the only thing I disagree with. Because I just don't know how long the timeline is for stuff like that. It can change pretty fast.
Will they really get paid less? The feeling I have now is that people are paid a lot not because of what they do, but because of the potential damage they can do in case they fucked up. E.g. CEOs, lawyers, etc. Moving some of the work to AI doesn't reduce the risk, so they should have the same pay in my mental model.
Plus C-level executives typically don't lower their pay, and IMO investors apparently don't care that much about their pay, I can't see a reason why their pay will be reduced (significantly).
Why can't the board network while having the AI generate the big ideas for the last few workers?
CEO's typically make decisions when there isn't enough data to support the obvious direction. In this way, they are anti-pattern finders that rely on gut or some anecdotal experience. They are most often wrong, but when they are right and it's a success they are considered genius. I'm not sure an AI can make a non-obvious decision based on feeling.
> I'm not sure an AI can make a non-obvious decision based on feeling.
You just described that CEOs are like broken clocks: they are mostly wrong, but sometimes they are right by chance.
How do you conclude that AIs can't do that? If it's about eloquently phrasing a random idea, AIs are perfect.
Did you find any way to generate good ideas with AI? Anecdotally, I found it incredibly unsatisfactory in this sense. It normally re-hashes old ideas without any internal coherence, like those novelty websites combining two existing startups to create a random mission (e.g. “AirBnB for motorbikes”).
When you consider that LLMs are trained on what can be scrapped from the web, the so called "creativity" comes from mashing together less commonly co-associated ideas.
Just train it on linkedin (ew)
Also, a CEO defines which way the company will go and makes questionable decisions like opting to build a Cybertruck. I don't see AIs doing these type of decisions, which are many, for now.
> The easiest job to replace must be the CEO.
So why didn't Warren Buffet replace himself as CEO with an AI, but instead he chose a human?
Anyone born in Buffets generation and are not rich wasn’t even getting out of bed.
A proper assessment of their skill relative to the ground truth they lived would be nice. One cannot simply walk into an office and rub elbows now. And the other half of the gender, and minorities make up a much larger part of the work force
New Deal bootstrapping then Reaganomics putting thumbs on the scales for those generations too.
His biggest asset was J&J when government was spending tons on health propaganda and grooming cause Americans used to be a bunch of greasy slobs. Oh look comb and toothbrush and mouthwash sales are staples buy buy buy then inflate through media propaganda and tax policy.
He was not a wizard.
Probably because not all CEOs are the same, like anything people do. There's good and involved ones and other where we wonder what they're really doing.
Because AI is bullshit
Exactly.