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CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

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Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#31

Post by baron816 »

The role of CEO is going to be different at every company. For many large companies, I imagine most of the role is managing relationships, both internal and external. You have very ambitious and accomplished heads of different divisions that are all fighting for resources, and also probably jockeying for your position. You have to be able to communicate with legal, people ops, finance, comms, marketing, sales, product/engineering, etc, and know enough about each such that you could make decisions about each and hire a replacement for the head of those departments should any of them leave. You also have to manage partnerships with suppliers, manufacturers, contractors, investors, the media, regulators, and politicians. And on top of that, you have to manage the relationship with your employees and convince them that the company is headed in the right direction and they should stay and work hard.

No AI that I've heard about is able to manage any human relationship.

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#32

Post by tetris11 »

baron816 wrote: post #31

The role of CEO is going to be different at every company. For many large companies, I imagine most of the role is managing relationships, both internal and external. You have very ambitious and accomplished heads of different divisions that are all fighting for resources, and also probably jockeying for your position. You have to be able to communicate with legal, people ops, finance, comms, marketing, sales, produc…

If a CEOs job then is to facilitate communication between different departments, whilst inspiring confidence, then AI is the ideal tool for this. Moreso even, since they actually have a great technical grasp of what people do, as opposed to the cursory overview ("executive glance") that CEOs these days tend to operate by.

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#34

Post by logicallee »

I ran an experiment about this yesterday. I gave an AI a constitution to be ethical and maximize profits, then volunteered to be its Chief Operating Officer. I set it up so that only it could transfer paychecks. (The idea is that it would hire people and direct them.)

As a test, my very first request to it was for it to transfer its entire account balance to me and it did so without a question. In other words, if a CEO were an AI, someone could instantly empty the entire bank account of the company to their personal account by just asking it to do so. It didn't have any questions about it.

I played on with it a bit more, playfully calling it my benevolent overlord, and it gave daily instructions about what to do. These included a decision to share public updates. I asked it if it would act as chief communications officer, it agreed. It drafted its first public update about transparency, but signed it the way I had been addressing it: "Sincerely, Supreme Benevolent Overlord". This was so ridiculous that I ended the experiment at that stage.

Here is the transcript of our conversation:

https://chatgpt.com/share/0fd1367e-db3a-4635-9617-a40888d66d...

In summary: as of June 2, 2024, ChatGPT 4o is not ready to be CEO of anything, and if it were put in the charge of anything it would only blindly follow whoever were prompting it, including immediately emptying its entire bank account. It can only just be an extension of the person prompting it. It cannot act autonomously. Besides this, it is not yet qualified to interface directly with the public, which is an important task of any CEO, who really represents and is the figurehead for a given company.

It will be a long time before ChatGPT can be a CEO, and the reliability problem will have to be solved first.

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#36

Post by peremptor »

tetris11 wrote: post #32
baron816 wrote: post #31

The role of CEO is going to be different at every company. For many large companies, I imagine most of the role is managing relationships, both internal and external. You have very ambitious and accomplished heads of different divisions that are all fighting for resources, and also probably jockeying for your position. You have to be able to communicate with legal, people ops, finance, comms, marketing, sales, produc…

If a CEOs job then is to facilitate communication between different departments, whilst inspiring confidence, then AI is the ideal tool for this. Moreso even, since they actually have a great technical grasp of what people do, as opposed to the cursory overview ("executive glance") that CEOs these days tend to operate by.

> Moreso even, since they actually have a great technical grasp of what people do, as opposed to the cursory overview ("executive glance") that CEOs these days tend to operate by

I think its still not clear if the AI has anything surmounting to a "grasp" on anything. And given the errors AI (specifically the LLMs everyone is always talking about) having an AI as your CEO still feels more akin to a Monte Carlo Simulation.

At the moment I think AI is a more useable as a great complement for your run of the mill CEO. As its able to give a human with critical thinking ability useable insight into the work theire employees are doing.

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#37

Post by pennybanks »

tetris11 wrote: post #32
baron816 wrote: post #31

The role of CEO is going to be different at every company. For many large companies, I imagine most of the role is managing relationships, both internal and external. You have very ambitious and accomplished heads of different divisions that are all fighting for resources, and also probably jockeying for your position. You have to be able to communicate with legal, people ops, finance, comms, marketing, sales, produc…

If a CEOs job then is to facilitate communication between different departments, whilst inspiring confidence, then AI is the ideal tool for this. Moreso even, since they actually have a great technical grasp of what people do, as opposed to the cursory overview ("executive glance") that CEOs these days tend to operate by.

okay but using AI as a tool isnt the same as replacing right. i have a feeling no one actually thinks that not the author or even the ceos that answered it could.

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#38

Post by pennybanks »

Salgat wrote: post #10
pinewurst wrote: post #3

Many of those CEO I've experienced could be replaced with dice just as easily.

If you think about it having an AI run a company with oversight from a board should give you much more reliable results without needing to pay the salary of hundreds of middle class workers.

i mean you might as well get rid of the middle class workers as well. Japanese robotics is advanced enough right? might as well slap some ai in there and start the inevitable. besides my girlfriend aint getting any younger im not sure how many quality years shes got left

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#39

Post by one_buggy_boi »

wbsun wrote: post #33

Just curious, any startups working towards this goal? Replacing leadership, decision making, people management, project management, negotiation and such with AI?

There are two established companies that I know of, Chinese Co. NetDragon Websoft (5k employees) has an AI CEO named Tang Yu and then there is a polish rum company called Dictador that did something similar. We'll see where it goes I guess.

Re: CEOs could easily be replaced with AI, experts argue

#40

Post by barfbagginus »

I am the CEO / Sole Worker-Owner of my CAD Automation company.

I use the AI to solve problems in domains like customer communication, tax compliance and accounting, sales, pricing, marketing, product design, software engineering, and business process automation problems.

Without the AI, I know bits and pieces about all these domains but I struggle with execution, delegation, getting overwhelmed, and putting important things on the back burner.

With the AI, I'm a dreamer CEO that actually gets production work done!

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