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If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

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Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#111

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

portaouflop wrote: post #32
armada651 wrote: post #12

An AI won't replace the CEO, because the AI can't take responsibility and step down for decisions the board of directors made. Now having the AI replace the board of directors is a more interesting proposition...

We can definitely destroy the version of AI CEO that made the bad decisions and replace it with a „better“ version.

That’s not really accountability though, at least not in the same sense as the legal meaning.

A CEO has a fiduciary duty that an AI cannot fulfill. Although we variously like to beat up on shitty CEOs around here (rightfully so), a corporate officer of any title requires an ability for cognition, reflection, and abstraction that an AI does not possess.

That might be a bit of a technical argument in a way, but at the end of the day AI doesn’t change the fact that you can’t hold a computer responsible. It’s a machine.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#112

Post by WWWMMMWWW »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #109
WWWMMMWWW wrote: post #4

There's also AI's dark secret coming out -> it's very expensive to run. But it's still WAY cheaper than upper management salaries, so, to employ classic MBA logic, they are the optimal staff to replace so as to maximize cost savings.

We’re already starting to see cracks in the foundations in some places in terms of GPU VM availability at hyperscalers. I know someone dealing with an open-ended Nvidia shortage at $MajorCloudVendor that doesn’t seem to have an anticipated end date. You can easily spend at least as much on AI per month as on a C-level officer.

Soooo ...

We'll have to start by replacing the CEOs and work our way down as AI costs drop?

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#113

Post by greg_V »

Jensson wrote: post #41
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #37

Software engineer here trying to start a startup. The amount of business advice GPT-4 has given me is immeasurable. I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Kind of like an AI CEO advising me on what to do next.

> I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Probably in large part because you can't verify when its wrong since that isn't your area of expertise, so those advice looks better to you. You should assume your org will be the same quality as a program written by a non-technical person using an LLM if you do it that way.

I had the "pleasure" of working for someone who would take the AI's word over mine in my domain of expertise. It was a hair-ripping experience to say the least and I'm while I'm not there anymore, from what I can see they hadn't improved in that area by an inch...

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#114

Post by avidphantasm »

tossandthrow wrote: post #68
avidphantasm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please disclose your startup name so that we can stay far far away from whatever havoc you unleash.

Wow This is extremely rude and downright uncomfortable to read on a forum where people are supposed to be curious. Who tf do you think you are?

There’s a proverb (I can’t remember where I read it now) that goes something like, “what comes in through the front gate isn’t the family jewels.” Seems appropriate here. There are no short cuts to building insight and and intuition.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#115

Post by jazzyjackson »

hxriv wrote: post #107
vessenes wrote: post #23

A fair number of r/antiwork type takes on this below. Since this is HackerNews, let's follow through the logic -- if the AI you're running is the CEO, who are you? You're the owner / shareholder / (board if you want to be). This wave of AI is like giving a superpower to people who can direct/imagine/realize what they want, describe it, and (for now) glue together the output of the AI. A lot of the work is ongoing thi…

Not to hijack the thread but I’m curious if you can lay out what is the core message of r/Antiwork? I can’t get my head around what the messages and goals are. (Do they have KPIs and OKRs? /semi-s)

it started as a kind of fully-automated gay space-communism vibe, techno optimist critique of calvinism / "protestant work ethic", how about we don't conflate an individual's worth with their economic productivity

at some point it became consumed by implausible screenshots of SMS conversations between oppressed wage workers and cartoonishly evil franchise managers

nowadays it is strictly eat the rich

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#116

Post by sdiupIGPWEfh »

WWWMMMWWW wrote: post #3
falcor84 wrote: post #2

I keep thinking of that Warren Bennis's quote: "The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment." Only now I think the dog will be robotic too.

which means you don't need the man to feed it

Figure the man (or woman) is really only there to meet legal requirements around having a human somewhere in the loop. The human is a liability, thus the dog. From the interpretation where dog is guarding the equipment, the dog may as well be robotic, sure. But some live animal also provides distraction from the equipment, as well as the ongoing companionship needed to keep the human psychologically stable, which is also crucial for long term liability. Spare human workers are hard to come by, most of them having died of starvation due to lack of employment.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#117

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

avidphantasm wrote: post #49

If AI cannot replace the CEO yet, perhaps the CFO is first? All you need is algorithmic financial engineering to ensure cashflow, unless I am out of touch and don’t understand what a CFO doe, which is possible.

The role of CFO isn’t about just the spreadsheets. In large organizations most of that analysis and reporting flows across or up to the CFO, which is in large part a fiducial and leadership function. Of course a CFO does analyze and sign off on statements and reports. They know the numbers of a business even if they can’t tell you off the top of their heads how much R&D is paying for Buildkite. They’re also usually a human-in-the-loop to authorize transactions large enough to be C-level and require two signatures.

A good CFO is very concerned and experienced in the nuance of business that isn’t captured in algorithms or databases. They are able to run a team that can integrate products and services into a business model, and help differentiate a business model from a competitor. They can advise other executives on why “that idea sounds great but done this way it would be money laundering,” to cite a seemingly bombastic example that I’ve encountered in real life.

Depending on deal size they may also be accompanying the CEO, other executives, or a CRO to dinner with a prospect.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#118

Post by ItsMonkk »

coldtea wrote: post #98

If A.I. can do many jobs, who is gonna pay for the products or services they make? People who were fired or had their salary scaled down because of AI don't tend to consume as much...

If locally hosted AI can do many jobs, why would a person ever consult a company and pay for their services?

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#119

Post by htrp »

falcor84 wrote: post #2

I keep thinking of that Warren Bennis's quote: "The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment." Only now I think the dog will be robotic too.

You can buy a robot dog for probably cheaper than an actual dog these days (looking at you unitree)

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#120

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

gcanyon wrote: post #21
Jensson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you put Tim Cook and Zuckerberg in the same sentence there, one is a founder the other is a climber. Building a big functional company like Zuckerberg did isn't something just anyone can do, Tim Cook just took over a big functional company and made it continue do what it did before. I think it will be a while until AI can build companies from scratch, but I think just running a company and keeping it do…

The common narrative is that Tim Cook was the organizer and glue behind Steve Jobs's vision for years, and "just took over a big functional company and made it continue do what it did before" is a funny way to describe the tear Apple has been on for the last ~15 years.

That is a narrative that is borne out by the record but it is a vast oversimplification. If we’re talking about Tim Cook specifically, he was a wonderful choice because of his SCM acumen. He was one of the original architects of the supply chain system Apple uses to this day. Product OEMs that follow a philosophy like Apple’s are in a sense logistics and SCM firms as much as they are software firms.

Particularly in that regard (speaking to SCM) Apple is a place of constant change and that it all works as well as it does is a bit of a miracle brought forth by a bunch of talented people.

That applies equally to other massive, heavily integrated manufacturers, like Toyota for example.

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