I think you might not get serious responses, but I think this is an interesting question since I think AI is a better fit for management than many other jobs.
Nobody would have believed it 10 years ago, but today AI is more likely to replace a concept artist than an accountant, so it's not beyond imagination to replace a manager even if the ICs are still human.
AI excels at summarization, which is a big part of the job for a lot of managers. They gather information, go to meetings, write reports, and generally re-share information appropriate for whatever audience.
At a lot of companies, the lowest level managers don't make a lot of decisions either. Tech leads make technical decisions, PMs make product decisions, and the skip-levels (e.g. Directors, VPs) make staffing decisions.
In practice, I don't think humans will report to AIs, but hierarchies might flatten (e.g. ICs report to Directors) and responsibilities might get shuffled around (e.g. some duties get assigned to HR).
If the workers are AI-bots, then I don't really see any skill overlap with management. If you manage only AIs, you are an IC, not management.
Whole point of deep hierarchies is to diffuse responsibility. Either risky behavior goes down, or someone in the smaller hierarchy takes on larger risk relative to a similar person in that role at an earlier point in history. It would be my hope that risky behavior decreases because I'm not quite seeing the benefits of GDP going up forever and ever.
If a company wants to stay in business, the legal risk of AI bots firing people is probably not worth the cost savings. Until that changes, I don't think there's much to discuss, but that may not be long given the way things are going.
I don't think AI bots will make unilateral decisions about firing the same way a line manager typically won't. E.g. a manager will typically make a recommendation to a director and/or HR who will than review and approve the final action. A smart director should investigate themselves and might reassign the IC to another manager or in rare cases fire the manager instead (e.g. if they suspect retaliation).
Don't know about HR AI-bots firing workers. But only last week there was a news segment about HR AI-bots doing the first level interviewing via video-calls. Which is intriguing since there have been some reports previously about job applicants using AI to enhance their interviews, especially for remote jobs. Could lead to an AI-vs-AI showdown.
Of course, I take such reports with a grain of salt, because I often wonder whether such news items are self-serving product promotions in disguise.
They don't have to admit that the decision was made by AI. One low-wage worker in HR can be the spokesperson who sells it as his decision.
So the thing about people who enforce laws is, they're not _completely_ stupid. Dodgy companies will pretty much always attempt to hide the fact that they're breaking the law; nothing new there.
No law specifically requires more than a coin flip, but firing people because some rando in HR "decided" without justification or documentation of cause can be risky.
> Nobody would have believed it 10 years ago, but today AI is more likely to replace a concept artist than an accountant
Do you really think so? I understand the basic sentiment of your statement but having tried to use AI for concept art, I was very disappointed at its lack of originality. Especially in an inevitably oversaturated market of AI creative work, I see the value of good human conceptual artists only rising.
Sure, it's a terrible concept artist and you shouldn't use it as one. But if you use it as an _accountant_, you're likely to end up in legal trouble, so, all in all, it is probably still a better concept artist than an accountant.