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Automate the CEOs

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Re: Automate the CEOs

#111

Post by nickelcitymario »

snowwrestler wrote: post #100
b112 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happened once, in the 80s. A massive reduction of the 'middle class', by eliminating massive amounts of middle management. Managers aren't overhead, it's an absurd statement, because it's an absolute. Managers allow leaders to extend their reach. Absolutely no leader can scale beyond a certain point. At all. Managers allow for that. They're essential, beyond a certain org size. Now, I will agree that som…

Google spent many months and millions of dollars to prove the value of managers. They tried to get rid of them, then spent tons of effort to study and understand the problems that caused. Ultimately for a company to succeed, people need to be aligned, and in an emotional space to do good work. That is very hard to automate. Google found they could not.

I think this again points to the difference between management and leadership. The emotional side of it -- the people side of it -- is leadership. It's coaching. It's understanding that everyone is an individual and has their own needs, as well as their own trauma and baggage. Leadership is knowing how to get everyone to work together towards a common cause. It requires empathy and compassion, as well as a strong understanding of the business.

I'm not saying AI could never do that, but the current generation of AI is nowhere near this capability. It'll take innovation beyond LLMs to get there.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#112

Post by topaz0 »

graypegg wrote: post #81

I’m no expert in business or management, but I feel like leadership plays a very “human” role? As in, you need to wheel-and-deal favours, get people excited, inspire confidence etc. If someone was going to make me chat with a chat bot to hash out some buy-out, or some big pitch for something, I’m not taking them seriously. At least a human has the smoke screen of “friendly person”, a LLM (even if read by a human) is…

Right. The point is that capitalism is the economic system built to optimally remove money from you and redistribute it to owners. So sure the idea wouldn't work because it would be making the game explicit (as you say, "too on the nose"), rather than hiding it behind mythology. Another point of the article is that the AI hype is also all about playing this game (disciplining workers so that their labor can be more effectively exploited), and not anything about the actual labor that people do.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#113

Post by starbugs »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #107
starbugs wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. You need an AI that has a will to survive and is afraid enough of the board so that it will do anything (moral or immoral) to make the company successful. Seems doable.

Not only doable, but most likely right? If there’s a world in which a group of rich people can pay for a technical system that will rigorously seek profit via managing all the employees, at a rate lower than they would pay a CEO, and with equivalent effectiveness? 100% this will happen.

I guess what really would make that lift off is if that system would be considerably better at that than the average CEO. It wouldn't even matter if it was cheaper then.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#114

Post by AndrewKemendo »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #101
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern corporation is literally a dictatorship: "form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations." Companies are *governed* by unimpeachable, unelected, all powerful groups that in practice treat employees like literal slaves (you don't have to be chattel or physically abused to be a slave). However because almost all employment agreeme…

echoing nickelcitymario, would love to hear what you're working on

https://seegull.org/

You can read our “Constitution” / Articles in the link

We’re “fundraising” now which is basically just issuing debt based on a negotiated interest rate and due date, so if you know anyone with 5k or more to spare that would be great. Obviously regular capitalist investors want nothing to do with us, which just makes it harder/slower and that’s ok.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#115

Post by kristopolous »

candiddevmike wrote: post #36
kristopolous wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They replace C-level people often and the relationship isn't what you imply. There's a structural power relationship in play. Monarchs play a fairly unimportant role these days but many countries still have them and compensate them handsomely. CEOs are structurally capitalist monarchs. Sometimes it's even a hereditary position. They even do the corporate equivalent of court and heraldry stuff. They're compensated not…

Most corporate structures are feudal. Folks should refer to their VPs as the Duke/Duchess of Engineering.

Personally I think merges and acquisitions should require a marriage between the CEOs and thereafter, they must sleep together just like it worked with kingdoms.

If you acquire multiple companies well then, fun times for you.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#116

Post by AndrewKemendo »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #75
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern corporation is literally a dictatorship: "form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations." Companies are *governed* by unimpeachable, unelected, all powerful groups that in practice treat employees like literal slaves (you don't have to be chattel or physically abused to be a slave). However because almost all employment agreeme…

I'd love to hear more about your non-stock cooperative. How is it structured? I'm genuinely fascinated.

Thanks! See my reply above, I don’t want to repost cause it looks spammy.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#117

Post by AndrewKemendo »

starbugs wrote: post #113
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only doable, but most likely right? If there’s a world in which a group of rich people can pay for a technical system that will rigorously seek profit via managing all the employees, at a rate lower than they would pay a CEO, and with equivalent effectiveness? 100% this will happen.

I guess what really would make that lift off is if that system would be considerably better at that than the average CEO. It wouldn't even matter if it was cheaper then.

I suppose I’m thinking about in the long run, but yes if you could build Manna today - it would be certainly be implemented somewhere at significant cost.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#118

Post by blitzar »

jacknews wrote: post #77

lol, it seems BS is one thing that CEOs and LLMs have in common, so maybe it's a match.

They both hallucinate when they dont know the answer and just spit out the first thing that comes to their head. Of course they annound this random "fact" to the world with complete certainty and authority.

Re: Automate the CEOs

#119

Post by dsr_ »

lordnacho wrote: post #87
calvinmorrison wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of what middle management is what secretaries used to do. If I ever run my own company I will hire a team of secretaries to work with my developers and our productivity will shoot through the roof. No everyone is organized, good at scheduling, following up on things, focusing at work, interpersonal discussions, sending memos, navigating bureaucracy, etc. A great secretary allows you to focus on getting developmen…

Whatever happened to secretaries anyway? Were they really cost-cut for managers to do by themselves? You're right though, it's a valuable job being the glue of a business. In more than one way, not just work-wise. Social stuff matters too, and was often the domain of the secretaries.

Secretaries spent a lot of time typing, and therefore were considered to be typists. In the 1990s using a keyboard went from a subservient role (typist) to a prestigious role (computers are expensive!) and then achieved ubiquity.

If you look at things through the lens of social status signalling among primates, an awful lot becomes clear. Consider office arrangements. What primates like is having:

- a private space to retreat to, and

- a team/family shared space, and

- a tribal/company shared space that strangers can be invited to visit, often decorated to show off success/wealth.

Control is established by the leaders awarding better territories to themselves and favorite allies, and by removing private spaces for those of low status. The worst insult is to remove space ownership altogether for some low status people, making them "hot desk" or "hotel".

Re: Automate the CEOs

#120

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

ajsharp wrote: post #9

If CEOs were as replaceable and disconnected from the outcome of a business as the author suggests, boards would've started doing this long ago and CEO salaries would come down as a result (lots of people want to be CEOs, and by this author's logic, virtually anyone can do it). This is so disconnected from reality it reads like satire.

> > lots of people want to be CEOs

Lots of people want to be CEO (until they become CEO and until they make CEO kind of money)

By the first 3 months reality sets in and the person now in the CEO role understands that they are so far removed from the action that they are essentially relegated to the role of spokeperson and cheerleader, at maximum the role of general moving imaginary troops on a fictional battlefield.

If they can make peace with their role of political spokeperson and cheerleader they'd bail out as soon as they reach 5M net worth no debt. No less than 95% would bail out.

The remaining 5% would bail out once they reach 10M net worth no debt.

CEOs turnover and population is so low because it takes a special kind of monodimensional individual to have the world as your oyster 5-10M in your name and no debt and turn around and say "I'd rather go to work and pretend to be at the helm of an imaginary ship instead"

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