If one truly believed in LLMs being able to replace knowledge workers, then it would also hold that they could replace managers and execs. In fact, they should be able to do it even better: LLMs could convert every company into a "flat" one, bypassing the manangement hierarchy and directly consuming meeting notes from every meeting to get the real status as the source of truth, and provide suggestions as needed. If combined with web-search capability, they would also be more plugged into the market, customer sentiment, and competitors than most execs could ever be.
We're not at the point where we are replacing all software developers entirely (and will never be without real AGI), but we are definitely at the point where scaling back headcount is possible.
Also, creating software is much more testable and verifiable than what a CEO does. You can usually tell when the code isn't right because it doesn't work or doesn't pass a test. How can you verify that your AI CEO is giving you the right information or planning its business strategy effectively?
It's one of the biggest reasons that software development and art are the two domains in which AI excels. In software you can know when it's right, and in art it doesn't matter if it's right.
>You can usually tell when the code isn't right because it doesn't work or doesn't pass a test
Tests (as usually written, in unit-test form) only tell you that it's not completely broken, they're not a good indicator of it working well otherwise "vibecoded slop" wouldn't be a thing. And the tests themselves are usually vibecoded too which doesn't help much in detecting issues off the happy path.
>you verify that your AI CEO is giving you the right information or planning its business strategy effectively
The same could be said for human CEOs. A lot of them don't really have good success rates either.
> Tests (as usually written, in unit-test form) only tell you that it's not completely broken, they're not a good indicator of it working well otherwise "vibecoded slop" wouldn't be a thing
You can certainly end up with vibecoded slop that passes all the tests, but it won't pass other forms of evaluation (necessarily true, otherwise you could not identify it as vibecoded slop.)
> The same could be said for human CEOs. A lot of them don't really have good success rates either.
This is part of my point. The tight feedback loop that enables us to judge a model's efficacy in software, doesn't exist for the role of CEO.
> LLMs could convert every company into a "flat" one, bypassing the manangement hierarchy
It sounds like you're describing Manna by Marshall Brain