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Automate the CEOs
- catchnear4321 3y agoor perhaps people can deal with the true problem: people. who makes ceo-bot? people. not ceo people, but that paints ceos too harshly, to act like only they can do wrong. (they just do it with such gusto.) people are the problem. society. culture. not the existence, the current implementation. maybe in a few years.
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoWhere do we submit change requests for People 2.0? I found a bug where people crash after roughly 60-80 years and can't be rebooted, they're just plain bricked.
- catchnear4321 3y agothe operating environment is out of spec. that is an artificial product lifespan. unplanned obsolescence. cheaper to plan for replacements, until it isn’t. bug reports can be submitted to the internet. no guarantees of effort are tied to such a report. most importantly, outsourcing the issue is somewhat the issue itself.
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoI guess I'll just reverse-engineer the binaries and patch it myself. If you want something done right...
- Brendinooo 3y ago> Shareholders are spending these extravagant sums for tasks that can now be done just as well by an AI program trained on 100 years of corporate reports and Wall Street Journal texts. Citation needed, etc. I think this is just meant to be funny but if anyone wants it to be more than that I’d need to see some actual proof.
- czbond 3y ago> Shareholders are spending these extravagant sums for tasks that can now be done just as well by an AI program trained on 100 years of corporate reports and Wall Street Journal texts. The quote from the article is clearly from someone who has never run a company, of size at least. People have a very hard time being good CEO's, AI will not make that happen any time soon.
- topaz0 3y agoIt's good to be skeptical of this kind of claim of course, but part of the point of the article in my view is that the narrative is pretty credulous when you say this about writers or programmers or artists -- i.e. people who do not control capital.
- Brendinooo 3y agoAnd yet there's plenty of evidence that certain copywriting jobs can be replaced by GPT right now. I haven't seen any evidence that GPT is competent enough to replace a CEO position, nor am I sure who would be writing the prompts in that case and how that position would be any different than a CEO. (I'd be cool with CEOs making less than 400x their workers though)
- mxstbr 3y ago…writes a person who's never been a CEO before. Which is not to say that AI won't be immensely helpful for running companies; just that once you're in the role for two days you realize that replacing that role entirely isn't going to happen. > AI can win at chess now. You think being a CEO is harder than chess? Come on. Being a CEO isn't like playing chess. Being a CEO is more like a really complex version of self-driving cars. Why? Because it involves interacting with other humans, all the time. It's all people problems. Chess isn't. Chess is decision-making with a finite (if immense) set of possibilities. Very different set of problems.
- foldr 3y ago>just that once you're in the role for two days you realize that replacing that role entirely isn't going to happen. Journalists might very well say the same thing (when people who've never been journalists talk about replacing them with AI).
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThe kind of journalism that journalists want you to think they do - going out into war zones or directly interviewing people to find out new things of public interest - isn't replaceable by AI. The kind of journalism they actually do - hanging out on Twitter and repeating whatever goes trending there - is easily replaceable. They did this to themselves.
- foldr 3y agoThat is certainly the view of many people who aren't writers or journalists. We'll see if it plays out. Jobs do tend to appear simpler than they really are when looking in from the outside. >They did this to themselves. And who set this bad direction? The CEO. This hardly adds to the case for not replacing him with an AI.
- jonas21 3y agoIt is also the view of many working journalists, or at least the ones I know. And it's not like some CEO decided "hey, let's pivot to churning out low-quality clickbait because I really like that stuff." They were forced to by the shift of ad budgets from print to more targeted advertising and the consolidation of news readership into a small number of well-known publications. Though I do agree that it's equally unfair to blame journalists for this.
- GartzenDeHaes 3y agoCEO's and mid to upper management are about power, not doing things. Why is it so hard for us to understand something that is so simple and so obvious?
- boringg 3y agoI mean it is about power but other things as well. Its crude and inaccurate to simplify it solely to power.
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoPower and lying to the press, then. Still in AI's wheelhouse.
- boringg 3y agoThats a touch cynical.
- bumby 3y agoBut what is power? It's an means to getting things done (albeit not necessarily 'doing them' yourself)
- boringg 3y agoPower is the amount of energy transferred or converted per unit time. Whereas energy is the ability to do work. Power is the ability to do more work, faster.
- bumby 3y agoThat's the engineering definition of power. The sociological definition is the ability of an group or individual to exert control or influence. (Note power in the sociological sense can also be used to prohibit 'work'. E.g., if someone is powerful in Congress, they can stop a bill that would might be more productive in the sense of the engineering definition.)
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoWe can't afford to do this: it would put too many coke dealers and mistresses out of business.
- HPsquared 3y agoAlready been done with Wall Street traders.
- ElfinTrousers 3y agoHadn't heard, but nice.
- ajsharp 3y agoIf 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.
- kristopolous 3y agoThey 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 based on competency but instead, like every other job, via social arrangement. If you don't think that's how salaries work, you're getting underpaid.
- candiddevmike 3y agoMost corporate structures are feudal. Folks should refer to their VPs as the Duke/Duchess of Engineering.
- xp84 3y agoI hope this isn’t a hot take, but after seeing the apparent endgame of “democracy” play out over the last 10 years or so, I’m fine with business being done using a completely contrasting system.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIs it the endgame of X if X is losing the fight? This has been the endgame of marketing.
- juneballoon 3y ago
- freetanga 3y ago[flagged]
- m0llusk 3y agoOne possible next step might be composing an example. Currently automated CEOs have achieved at best modest accomplishments.
- romanichm12 3y ago[flagged]
- HPsquared 3y agoIf the CEO is an AI, that will play well with the AI investing systems that allocate capital. Ironically it looks like the truck drivers and shelf stackers will be the last people to go.
- zirgs 3y agoAutomating dexterity-based tasks is very expensive. Much more expensive than hiring a teenager or an immigrant.
- nickelcitymario 3y agoClose. Automate middle management. All the things mentioned in the article really are prime candidates for automation. But that's management, not leadership. Management is primed to be automated. See Marshall Brain's book "Manna" for a great take on what's possible here. Leadership is not. LLMs are great at doing the right things when there's a general consensus on what the right things are. Best practices, etc. But what the current technology cannot do, and what I think LLMs specifically could never do, is know when to break the rules. As Phil Knight may or may not have said (he was quoted in the new Air movie): You're remembered for the rules you break. That's leadership. A great CEO needs to be a leader first and foremost, and a manager second.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago50% 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 development or whatever work you do in and out instead of on the day to day running of life. I don't want a scrum master, I want a secretary. As a manager, 90% of what I do as a manager is follow up with people, act as an escalation point for managing timelines, organizing who can do what, and none of this really is a skill related to my actual skillset. Luckily I am able to commit to 20/hrs a week of development, but I could probably do 35 with a secretary - and use those last 5 hours to focus on strategy, direction, leadership stuff that's actually important.
- candiddevmike 3y agoHire some psychologists to replace HR and you'll have people stick around forever.
- andsoitis 3y ago> you'll have people stick around forever that's not the goal
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoThe CEO is the action organ of the board and is intended to be burnable. At any point The board decides that the organization is not providing maximum financial compensation back to the board and shareholders, the CEO will be replaced for someone that will. That’s the role of a CEO and nothing more
- starbugs 3y agoThis. 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.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoNot 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.
- starbugs 3y agoI 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.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoI 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.
- starbugs 3y agoJust thinking this might be a possible avenue for it to be developed. If the reward is having a higher revenue margin than the competition, then it would be worth the (nearly any) investment. Reminds me of this ST Voyager episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Care_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Care_(Star_Trek:_Voya...
- pydry 3y agoThis is like designing just the right shape of bomb to bring peace to the middle east. Neoliberal solutions dont work on the captains of the neoliberal order. If you want to bring CEOs to heel the best way to to organize, unionize and strike (if youre not a dev) or unionize and/or covertly work to rule (if you are).
- ilaksh 3y agoThat's how the article concludes.
- the_sleaze9 3y agoWhy would only software developers work-to-rule? This would be called simple sabotage. What possible gain could be derived from that? Why can't engineers unionize?
- pydry 3y ago>Why would only software developers work-to-rule? This would be called simple sabotage. Probably they won't - as a profession it completely lacks class consciousness, as underscored so neatly by this comment of yours. The resultant talent oversupply caused by people chasing middle class wages via bootcamps and an overwhelming lack of solidarity will likely end up with the profession being paid somewhere between "starving physics PhD" and "plumber" for most roles. Striking will probably be tried a few times but, judging by how many software systems ive seen tick over for months with 0 developers, it's likely to fall flat on its face.
- beedeebeedee 3y ago> unionize and strike (if youre not a dev) Why is unionizing and striking not ok for devs? That seems a little cowardly
- pydry 3y agoI wasn't passing moral judgment. Striking simply wouldnt work for devs due to the nature of the job.
- leashless 3y agoPlease.
- systems_glitch 3y agoYou know what will be the actual AI apocalypse? When (probably middle mgmt at first, and maybe some dumb CEOs) mgmt starts treating LLMs like the Magic Meatball and following the advice blindly.
- sf4lifer 3y agoTruly successful CEOs make decisions where there is no definitive data and end up being right. It's not clear to me AI's would be good at that. Most CEO's have a chief of staff, that's probably something AI could replace.
- the_sleaze9 3y agoAnd Finance (soon), Legal (less soon).
- ilaksh 3y agoHe's obviously (mostly) joking. What's telling though is how many people in this thread are taking the suggestion seriously.
- chasing 3y agoI think everyone arguing about whether a CEO actually can/should be replaced by an AI are missing the point of the article…
- mepian 3y agoAs soon as I saw the title, I remembered this slide by IBM from the 1970s: https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545 https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/13855657371677245...
- jacknews 3y agolol, it seems BS is one thing that CEOs and LLMs have in common, so maybe it's a match.
- blitzar 3y agoThey 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.
- graypegg 3y agoI’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 just too on the nose as “we’ve automated removing money from you”. Also who do you call out when they make a bad decision? When people want blood, they want the person they’re attacking to bleed.
- topaz0 3y agoRight. 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.
- graypegg 3y agoShould make it clear, I’m not saying being a (human) CEO is some altruistic career. Capitalism will burn us all to the ground. But AI CEO is so blatantly “saying the quiet part out loud” that it’s just comically maligned.
- monopolyofpain 3y ago[flagged]
- seydor 3y agoAutomate politicians too. Lets make a quantitative framework for democracy
- huijzer 3y agoAlthough there are probably some poor CEOs, it seems to be that most CEOs occupy a power law in their domain. Although you might not agree with their methods, you have to agree that people such as Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, are extremely good in raising and allocating capital. Automation is unlikely to automate these people anytime soon.
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoFunny thing being in a big company doing a job that's mostly pointless. I'm paid well. Do everything I'm told. Top performer. I'm happy though as I'm providing for the family. My accomplishments amount to one day of effort, output, results every month. This has been happening for years. I am curious how many of me exist. The Twitter firing suggests that's it's over 50% so it's that's true, what exactly are managers doing? Most tell me they're in meetings, looking over spreadsheets and meeting with staff. I run my house and meet with my spouse for about twenty minutes a quarter over financials. Everything is automated. Everything is scheduled. We are adults. Labor is divided, assigned, adjusted as we age. Large companies get in the position of not reducing head count because, yes, they're people with lives and relationships matter. Solution? I'm thinking more of a State style employment but limited. If hired, you're job is secure for five years. Automate you job entirely? Good on you! Do not apply...... TAKE a new job in the company. You're slow to onboard? Fine. Dead weight? Not renewed. Take the fear of insecurity off the table. People will behave according to their character.
- rkwasny 3y agoReminds me of people telling Elon Musk how to run a company :)