6 ms·

If you’ve ever taken a sales or business or networking course, and seen the people that take the advice literally and act like creepy wooden weirdos, you know w

by andy99 10mo ago

If you’ve ever taken a sales or business or networking course, and seen the people that take the advice literally and act like creepy wooden weirdos, you know why. Business “skill” is intangible, partially luck obviously but partially “game” that you can’t just systematize. It’s the same reason you can’t automate sales. An AI ceo would just be the composite of all the lame business advice you find on the internet - like a lot of wannabe CEOs that also don’t succeed. You might as well ask why people don’t use AI pickup coaches.

vittore 10mo ago
Well, but they do.
- gchamonlive 10mo ago
  To catastrophic effects, invariably.
  - Zigurd 10mo ago
    You meant that totally unironically?
    - gchamonlive 10mo ago
      How could AI coaches be successful?
Zigurd 10mo ago
So Reiki masters and fortune tellers are safe from being automated, too?
- monocasa 10mo ago
  I actually know a non zero amount of people that are using chatgpt to interpret their tarot card readings.
  - whstl 10mo ago
    I think even AI-skeptics can get behind ChatGPT replacing those jobs.
- laughingcurve 10mo ago
  Unironically, they are indeed somewhat safer -- however if people are willing to accept a substitute good of AI-based fortune telling... which I have seen lately ...
  - smegger001 10mo ago
    we automated fortune telling a long time ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_teller_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_teller_machine
idiotsecant 10mo ago
Let's say the CEO is some milquetoast average CEO. Is there some evidence that this is in fact a bad thing?
- simmerup 10mo ago
  It means you're never going to be the next Nvidia, and that your business strategy will be predictable
  - dukeyukey 10mo ago
    For the vast majority of companies, employees, and investors, that is enough.
  - idiotsecant 10mo ago
    Depending on how the next few quarters go being 'the next Nvidia' might not be the flex that's implied here. "Take big swings, maybe get a home run once in a while, maybe bankrupt the company' might be a model that makes stocks fun to trade, but it's arguable whether it's a good model for capitalism as a whole.
    - simmerup 10mo ago
      That's more a philosophical question really, but I just started thinking about how a AI CEO would work again. And now I think such a company with an AI CEO should also have an AI CTO, COO, etc. Replace the the entire upper layer with AI so that there's zero accountability and companies can commit (more blatant) fraud freely
tombert 10mo ago
I do think it's a lot about personality, though I gotta say that I don't really think it should be like that. My dad had a manager (who was a VP) that he privately nicknamed "VPGPT", because despite being a very polite and personable guy he pretty much knew nothing about the engineering he was ostensibly managing, and basically just spoke in truisms that sounded kind of meaningful unless you do any kind of analysis on them. I'm not saying that AI would necessarily be "better", but I do kind of hate how people who are utterly incapable of anything even approaching "technical" end up being the ones making technical decisions.
zelphirkalt 10mo ago
I like that this idea is brought up though, despite it being ridiculous currently, to hold a mirror in front of CEO faces. Just like we won't replace capable (!) CEOs with AI any time soon, we will not replace capable (!) developers with AI any time soon. It is good, that CEOs also get some of this "You will be replaced by AI!" flak, that we hear from CEOs of big tech directed at developers. Do those CEOs think their job is more complex than a software developer job, which they are so eager to replace? How many times more urgently do we want to replace the CEO, considering salaries? How about we put as many times the amount of money into that, as we are putting into trying to replace developers? In the end neither will work out any time soon, judging current "AI"'s actual AI level. I think for that we still need some 2-3 architectural leaps forward. And by that I don't mean simply building bigger ANNs and ingesting more data. It already seems like the returns for that are rapidly diminishing.
- grugagag 10mo ago
  This is not about the job being complex, they’re the top of the food chain. Also they have a network that an automated system could not replicate because it’s not a technical problem but more of a people problem
- tbrownaw 10mo ago
  > Do those CEOs think their job is more complex than a software developer job, which they are so eager to replace? You can estimate the difficulty of a job by what fraction is the population can successfully do it and how much special training this takes. Both of which are reflected in the supply curve for labor for that job. > How many times more urgently do we want to replace the CEO, considering salaries? How about we put as many times the amount of money into that, as we are putting into trying to replace developers? Pretty sure that (avg developer pay * number of developers) is a lot more that (avg ceo pay * number of ceos).
  - zelphirkalt 10mo ago
    To play the devil's advocate for a moment: Since businesses need to start somewhere/when and most startups fail, I think most people who even get into the role of CEO, are doing it successfully. However, this is a lot due to circumstances and many factors outside of their control. There are also many CEOs ruining their businesses with bad decisions. It is not certain, that an "AI" wouldn't do at least as good as those failing CEOs. Similarly, many developers ruin things they touch, introducing tons of complexity, dependencies and breaking user workflows or making workflows cumbersome without listening to user feedback and so on. In short many people do a bad job and businesses are carried by others, who do a good enough job to make a net positive for the final product. Or consequences of messing up are happening slowly, like a slow user drain, or a user replacement with bad actors until good actors start to leave, or any other possibility. About the pay argument: Well, these days you still need a good crew of developers to make the shiny AI toys do what you want them to do, so you are not replacing all of the developers, so you can't calculate like that. If we calculate some Silicon Valley CEO making 2 million and a developer making 100k-200k, then we are still at a ratio of 10x-20x. If we manage to make only one CEO obsolete or 2 out of 3 CEOs 1.5x as efficient, we have achieved a cost saving of 10-20 developers! Yay!...
add-sub-mul-div 10mo ago
> You might as well ask why people don’t use AI pickup coaches. You'll easily find people preaching or selling that sort of thing on Twitter, and the sort of people who are still on Twitter are probably buying it.
- klipt 10mo ago
  Haven't a bunch of people fallen in love with ChatGPT? There's a whole Reddit called myboyfriendisai (Probably mentally unhealthy people, but still it happens!)
whstl 10mo ago
> An AI ceo would just be the composite of all the lame business advice you find on the internet I thought you meant "AI-startup CEO" for a moment and was going to agree.
ethbr1 10mo ago
> If you’ve ever taken a sales or business or networking course, and seen the people that take the advice literally and act like creepy wooden weirdos, you know why. Business “skill” is intangible, partially luck obviously but partially “game” that you can’t just systematize. It's really only 3 things: - Empathy - Intelligence - Sociopathy The reason there are so few people good at it (high-level sales, high-level business management) is that those qualities rarely coincide in a single individual in a useable way. Empathy is required because you cannot communicate with someone without understanding their individual perspective. Otherwise you end up with {generic response}. Intelligence is being able to know what to do with the signals empathy picks up. Doesn't matter if you see opportunity if you can't come up with a creative solution to take advantage of it. And finally, sociopathy is common, but rarely balanced out by the other two to the right degree. Definitely a knowing-when vs when-not issue. But critical as novel solutions look a lot like batshit-crazy ones to everyone else.

by andy99 10mo ago

vittore 10mo ago

Well, but they do.

gchamonlive 10mo ago
To catastrophic effects, invariably.
- Zigurd 10mo ago
  You meant that totally unironically?
  - gchamonlive 10mo ago
    How could AI coaches be successful?

Zigurd 10mo ago

So Reiki masters and fortune tellers are safe from being automated, too?

monocasa 10mo ago
I actually know a non zero amount of people that are using chatgpt to interpret their tarot card readings.
- whstl 10mo ago
  I think even AI-skeptics can get behind ChatGPT replacing those jobs.
laughingcurve 10mo ago
Unironically, they are indeed somewhat safer -- however if people are willing to accept a substitute good of AI-based fortune telling... which I have seen lately ...
- smegger001 10mo ago
  we automated fortune telling a long time ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_teller_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_teller_machine

idiotsecant 10mo ago

Let's say the CEO is some milquetoast average CEO. Is there some evidence that this is in fact a bad thing?

simmerup 10mo ago
It means you're never going to be the next Nvidia, and that your business strategy will be predictable
- dukeyukey 10mo ago
  For the vast majority of companies, employees, and investors, that is enough.
- idiotsecant 10mo ago
  Depending on how the next few quarters go being 'the next Nvidia' might not be the flex that's implied here. "Take big swings, maybe get a home run once in a while, maybe bankrupt the company' might be a model that makes stocks fun to trade, but it's arguable whether it's a good model for capitalism as a whole.
  - simmerup 10mo ago
    That's more a philosophical question really, but I just started thinking about how a AI CEO would work again. And now I think such a company with an AI CEO should also have an AI CTO, COO, etc. Replace the the entire upper layer with AI so that there's zero accountability and companies can commit (more blatant) fraud freely

tombert 10mo ago

I do think it's a lot about personality, though I gotta say that I don't really think it should be like that. My dad had a manager (who was a VP) that he privately nicknamed "VPGPT", because despite being a very polite and personable guy he pretty much knew nothing about the engineering he was ostensibly managing, and basically just spoke in truisms that sounded kind of meaningful unless you do any kind of analysis on them. I'm not saying that AI would necessarily be "better", but I do kind of hate how people who are utterly incapable of anything even approaching "technical" end up being the ones making technical decisions.

zelphirkalt 10mo ago

I like that this idea is brought up though, despite it being ridiculous currently, to hold a mirror in front of CEO faces. Just like we won't replace capable (!) CEOs with AI any time soon, we will not replace capable (!) developers with AI any time soon. It is good, that CEOs also get some of this "You will be replaced by AI!" flak, that we hear from CEOs of big tech directed at developers. Do those CEOs think their job is more complex than a software developer job, which they are so eager to replace? How many times more urgently do we want to replace the CEO, considering salaries? How about we put as many times the amount of money into that, as we are putting into trying to replace developers? In the end neither will work out any time soon, judging current "AI"'s actual AI level. I think for that we still need some 2-3 architectural leaps forward. And by that I don't mean simply building bigger ANNs and ingesting more data. It already seems like the returns for that are rapidly diminishing.

grugagag 10mo ago
This is not about the job being complex, they’re the top of the food chain. Also they have a network that an automated system could not replicate because it’s not a technical problem but more of a people problem
tbrownaw 10mo ago
> Do those CEOs think their job is more complex than a software developer job, which they are so eager to replace? You can estimate the difficulty of a job by what fraction is the population can successfully do it and how much special training this takes. Both of which are reflected in the supply curve for labor for that job. > How many times more urgently do we want to replace the CEO, considering salaries? How about we put as many times the amount of money into that, as we are putting into trying to replace developers? Pretty sure that (avg developer pay * number of developers) is a lot more that (avg ceo pay * number of ceos).
- zelphirkalt 10mo ago
  To play the devil's advocate for a moment: Since businesses need to start somewhere/when and most startups fail, I think most people who even get into the role of CEO, are doing it successfully. However, this is a lot due to circumstances and many factors outside of their control. There are also many CEOs ruining their businesses with bad decisions. It is not certain, that an "AI" wouldn't do at least as good as those failing CEOs. Similarly, many developers ruin things they touch, introducing tons of complexity, dependencies and breaking user workflows or making workflows cumbersome without listening to user feedback and so on. In short many people do a bad job and businesses are carried by others, who do a good enough job to make a net positive for the final product. Or consequences of messing up are happening slowly, like a slow user drain, or a user replacement with bad actors until good actors start to leave, or any other possibility. About the pay argument: Well, these days you still need a good crew of developers to make the shiny AI toys do what you want them to do, so you are not replacing all of the developers, so you can't calculate like that. If we calculate some Silicon Valley CEO making 2 million and a developer making 100k-200k, then we are still at a ratio of 10x-20x. If we manage to make only one CEO obsolete or 2 out of 3 CEOs 1.5x as efficient, we have achieved a cost saving of 10-20 developers! Yay!...

add-sub-mul-div 10mo ago

> You might as well ask why people don’t use AI pickup coaches. You'll easily find people preaching or selling that sort of thing on Twitter, and the sort of people who are still on Twitter are probably buying it.

klipt 10mo ago
Haven't a bunch of people fallen in love with ChatGPT? There's a whole Reddit called myboyfriendisai (Probably mentally unhealthy people, but still it happens!)

whstl 10mo ago

> An AI ceo would just be the composite of all the lame business advice you find on the internet I thought you meant "AI-startup CEO" for a moment and was going to agree.

ethbr1 10mo ago

> If you’ve ever taken a sales or business or networking course, and seen the people that take the advice literally and act like creepy wooden weirdos, you know why. Business “skill” is intangible, partially luck obviously but partially “game” that you can’t just systematize. It's really only 3 things: - Empathy - Intelligence - Sociopathy The reason there are so few people good at it (high-level sales, high-level business management) is that those qualities rarely coincide in a single individual in a useable way. Empathy is required because you cannot communicate with someone without understanding their individual perspective. Otherwise you end up with {generic response}. Intelligence is being able to know what to do with the signals empathy picks up. Doesn't matter if you see opportunity if you can't come up with a creative solution to take advantage of it. And finally, sociopathy is common, but rarely balanced out by the other two to the right degree. Definitely a knowing-when vs when-not issue. But critical as novel solutions look a lot like batshit-crazy ones to everyone else.