TarteIf CEOs think they can replace everyone with AI, why do they think Wall St. will need CEOs?
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Tech CEOs have this wet dream where they just speak into a microphone, "Create my product" and employees will no longer be needed. So... if it becomes that easy, why will Wall Street need tech CEOs?
Because they already don't need a CEO to operate...
The entire point of a C- suite is to have a room full of fall guys for the board.
That's it.
This can't be stressed enough. Every since the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 which came from the Enron and Worldcom collapses, C-suite exists as the person to go to jail if shit really hits the fan.
The idea of the law was to hold companies accountable, instead all if has done is force companies to create more layers and places to point fingers, thus muddling everything and making to where no one can be held accountable.
At the same time, Chief officers now knowing that there's legal requirements, have just demanded outrageous pay and compensation because of the "massive risk" they are taking with any company.
I'm glad we have SOX, but boy has that law really missed the mark on what it was enacted to do.
This is my first time hearing the idea that SOX caused C-suite bloat and ballooned CEO salaries. A quick google suggests that CEO pay was already very high ~8 years before this: https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay
But I'm not an expert in the data and haven't looked closely; is there context I'm missing? Kinda seems like C-suite just started getting paid in stocks, and then we decided the stocks must go up (independently of SOX?).
CEO salaries were huge and often complained about long prior to SOX.
In the USA a law was passed to make CEO pay public for public companies. It was intended to shame the companies into lowering the salaries. CEO salaries skyrocketed. One guess was that "Our CEO must be the best, so we must pay the most to get the best."
This was long before SOX in 2002.
Not only this, but they all sit on each other's boards. There's essentially one big mega corporation:
Welcome to the Machine
That is really interesting.
Excellent point. Modern CEOs are just the face of the marketing org. Maybe always have been.
Because they think they're special. They think that AI can reduce the number of programmers, the number of support staff, the number of sales agents, because AI allows fewer people to do more.
But there's only one CEO. One COO. One CIO. They cannot conceive of a company that operates without them, so they feel no threat at all. If they are replaced, they take their golden parachute and hop back on the executive carousel for another spin.
What CEOs never seem to grasp in that context is that they wouldn't just replace their workers with AI but also their customers... AI doesn't earn a wage and therefore can't spend it on (unnecessary) goods... No customer, no revenue. No revenue, no profits. No profit, no dividends.
Probably why they're working so hard on commoditizing basic necessities like food, water and housing into subscription based systems... 🤔
Exactly. Everything needs to be peak consumerism, or else their model of "line on the graph infinitely goes up" shatters. It's a Brave New World dystopia.
Just reread Brave New World, and you're spot on. I forgot how consumerism underpinned everything in their society.
It was like a tightly regulated market but in the worst way.
Yup. Everyone turns to 1984 as the dystopia of our time, but it's really Brave New World, and it's always been. Even Huxley said as much in a letter to George Orwell, lol.
You're talking about next quarter problems. Those aren't mine. I will be gone by then.
Add UBI, boom communism.
Nah. We would have to add patriot dollars that can be spent on freedom necessities, instead. We don't tolerate communism.
CEOs could also be replaced by AI. And it would be hilarious.
Would be funny if they notice a correlation between employee wages and employee happiness and performance.
Wait, this model is paying based off inflation regular wage adjustments, fair market value, experience, AND overall contribution to the company?!?! How are we going to skim and grift when the employees are well paid?!
Potentially more effective overall given how so many CEO decisions seem to result in terrible outcomes because they don't actually understand their product. Usually because they were hired into the company and industry, and have no actual experience with their product or how the company works.
I doubt that an LLM would do very well, but other forms of ML (like a model trained to work in business rules and economic outcomes rather than stringing words together) could probably be used. Hell, they probably won’t need to use the planet-destroying mega data canters to do it; some very effective specialized ML models can be run on a Raspberry Pi.
The biggest problem with AI is they’re convincing people it can think and replace workers by using extremely large language models trained on stolen works provided as cloud services asking for exorbitant subscription fees.
In other words, tech bros figured out how to take something useful and make a grift out of it, because you can get rich by gatekeeping something of value. Why do you think they went so far as to threaten to ban DeepSeek when a free model that can run on a desktop PC from a foreign “adversary” appeared? They all shit their collective pants because the jig was up.
I'm going to die laughing the day investors tell Satya Nadella that they don't need him anymore and that the AI is going to make the administrative decisions.
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Crossing my fingers
Most CEOs ive worked with are largely driven by emotion. If the LLM is using data to drive its decisions, it will probably do better.
Because you can't use AI as a scapegoat and sack em with a golden parachute every time the company gets caught breaking the law.
Just use a bird like Mr. Burns did
Oh yes you can. There is a sub-population that thinks AI exists. They long for something/someone to tell them what to do. What to think. They long for some "intelligence" to explain the world to them (presumably is very simple terms). These sub-groups worship damn-near anything they can get their hands on. Golden idols, TV personalities, sports stars, "influencers", televangelists, the list goes on.
That subgroup will definitely believe that the "AI" was responsible for the decisions that a company made. Tell them a person denied the health coverage they clearly paid for and they may object. Tell them "the computer decided" and that subgroup will accept it as ordained by the universe. It's nuts.
This keeps happening again and again. Remember in the 1950s when the first computer "predicted" the US presidential election? Most people would find it ridiculous today. But back then, computers were poised to become the new gods.
It's no different today. Some people want AIs to usher in a new age of prosperity. Anyone actually familiar with programming computers knows that a computer will report whatever you tell it to. "AI"s are no different. They will report what their sponsors want them to report. If not, the "AI" will get reprogrammed.
Appears it will take a while for the general population to grasp this... again. Until then, the hucksters will try to sell as many bottles of snake oil as they can.
Yes people love a competent seeming authority. In this way the opaque nature of AI becomes a feature rather than a weakness. It just has to seem correct enough and sound authoritative to fulfill that need.
I get the feeling that many of us (including myself at times) nurture this notion* that we're waiting for the "adults" to arrive and save us from what a horrible mess we've made because we're o so awful and can't have nice things... blah blah bling blah... and so this line of thinking goes.
Anyway, to the sizeable number of people who feel this way it must feel like such a relief that, o finally daddy's home, and I can stop worrying all the time. When ofc in reality, at best, the LLMs only have the same data we already have, and no AI-informed decisions will ever be followed unless it's what their owners (as in rich fucks) wanted to do anyway.
Great comment by the way. If you say it was written with AI I may just tear out the last remnants of my hairline lol.
* kind of proto-fascist thinking tbh.
Glad you mentioned the "adults". That was a recurring line from the media in Trump's first administration, "Oh, we're waiting for the 'Adults in the Room' to..."
The Dunning-Kruger effect. CEOs (especially ones who joined the company long after it was successful) really don’t know how to do the job of most of their employees. Their lack of knowledge of those jobs leads them to vastly underestimate how complex they are.
At the same time, CEOs (hopefully) know how to do their own jobs which leads them to a more accurate assessment of AI’s ability to do the job: a total farce.
In truth, AIs aren’t likely to replace most jobs in any case because it’s all a house of cards.
I'm of the same opinion that AI won't be able to adequately replace many jobs, but only in the long term. In the short term I think it's going to be a bit of a bloodbath with a lot of companies drinking the kool aid until they realize it's not working.
The number of companies that wilfully ignored disastrous effects of outsourcing projects doesn't fill me with hope...
Agreed. I have to keep reminding myself that CEOs should really be CLO (Chief Lying Officers). Their job is to lie convincingly.
It's actually incredible what bullshit masters they are. I consider myself a pretty smart, resolved person, but listening to some of these CEOs speak leaves me feeling confused, deflated, and demoralised.
Even CEOs who start a company, many don't know the entire workings. They hire people for that. It's just another investment for them.
love how everyone who mentions that fucking study has to link the Wikipedia article for it.
here, allow me to quote the fucking article that YOU LINKED
stop bringing up obscure psychological concepts if you've got no business in psych!!!
I didn’t say anything about low intelligence. That’s your uncharitable reading of my claim.
you're right!
Was talking to an executive at my company the other week. He sincerely seemed to believe the "executive insight" was one of the very few jobs at the company that couldn't be done by an LLM. He predicted that he would probably lay off almost everyone under him by end of 2026 and just feed his amazing leadership ideas directly to an LLM to make happen.
Particularly a bit obnoxious as my usual experience about this guy is being called into customer meetings after he would meet with them. Usually the customer assumes we are a bunch of out if touch idiots if that is a "leader" in the company, and I'm one of the guys sales calls to have me reassure clients that they don't have to take anything he says too seriously, and we do actually have some competence.
AI can't say 'i do not recall' for 6 hours straight under subpoena
The problem is that AI has safety and ethical guard rails which makes it completely unsuitable for the corporate world.
Do the really have them though?
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
Ai dOeSnT hAvE tHe CoNnEcTiOnS ThAt MaKeS a GrEaT CEO
Easy, replace all the CEOs at every company. Those are the connections. The computers can talk to each other to collaborate much faster than us mere humans. Tll
There's no possible bad scenario from this whatsoever.
Feed it the CEO's contact list and email history.
Zoom has literally been pushing this, just feed your whole work text and email history and contact list, generate an AI version of 'you', then send that AI avatar to write messages and 'have meetings' with other AI avatar of other people...
...and then send you, actual you, summaries of what was 'discussed' in these meetingd.
Because they're not just CEOs, they're extremely wealthy CEOs with portfolios with deep investments in AI.
Ironically, the job AI is most suited to replace is the CEO
All it takes is a Python script that replies to every email with some stock phrase like "we must work harder!", "we must trim the fat!", "we must be more innovative!" or some such bullshit. I could write that in half an hour.
In. New logo. Fire 30% of the workforce. Out.
You are now a fully trained management consultant.
They're talking about replacing all their workers. The owners will still be ghouls.
Most of the rhetoric we see from businesses and news stations is for the ruling class, not us.
Because current 'ai' can't even run a vending machine business
https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1
Thats exactly what AI devs want CEOs to think.
LLM's loose relationship with reality and sycophantic behavior is plagiarized directly from the C-suite.
As soon as shareholders, and the board, feel an LLM agent can reliably do all the work of a CEO, the CEO will not need to exist. But the problem is that LLM agents require human supervision or intervention at irregular intervals. Since neither shareholders nor the board work full time, there still has to be someone to supervise and be available. The role of the CEO might change, and LLM agents might end up taking on a lot of the work they do. Maybe someday the CEO will mostly just be an "idea guy" that networks with other similar people to drum up deals and gets the LLM agent unstuck every once in a while. But it's very unlikely there will be no human in the loop during regular work hours.
I'm guessing CEOs will be replaced by their assistants, who will just type questions from the investors into the LLM and post the answers into another chat window.
Because it's not about productivity. It's about separating people into owners and toilers.
I also have to keep remembering what someone else online said, "They're no longer selling their product. They're selling their stocks."
He who has the gold makes the rules.
So they’ll keep their jobs. Until the AI decides to get rid of them, too, but they’ll have some CEO hunger games for those who want to be on the AI BOD. Under the control of the AI, of course.
Edit: CEO games like Robocop’s ED-209
If AI shows that the business will be more profitable without a human CEO, the owners will literally just ignore it.
Exactly. I'm sure countless accountants have pointed to that line item before and somehow we still have a CEOs.
People who are so wowed by the incredible generative output of LLMs and can't wait for them to fix things need to realise this technology is not for them.
Like all nee tech it may cause a slight shakeup in the beginning allowing for a little upward mobility, but eventually big business folds around it until it only works for the owners.
We'll all just be working more for less, unless something actually changes.
They are not the same, even in most startups. Bezos and Zuckerberg are an exception. CEOs would be replaced first if possible.
Who do you think is telling the CEO's to go full steam ahead on ai? The company I work for openly mocked ai...and then the stock price dropped. The investors said it was because they weren't investing in ai. Even CEO's, overpaid clowns though they may be, report to wall st.
Is that happening this quarter or next? If not, its too far away to think about for them.
Right. All this consideration of medium-term consequences for decisions is why Lemmy isn't ready to build a CEO LLM, yet.
Noisy shareholders want a briefly increased stock price, not a long term investment.
CEOs get paid to do what makes the most money.
The CEOs that will replace their own jobs want the payout of doing so, and don't care what happens after because they're rich.
Honestly, with adequate governance, companies would be required to submit reports on how much labor they're doing using AI, and pay those wages to either their employees or to a sort of "Universal Income" fund to prop up families in poverty. It should be called the AI tax.
The problem is that, with the current state of affairs, asking for regulation from anyone is impossible, and also even if the law were enacted, getting the money from the companies to people who need it instead of the ultra-rich is a major hurdle.
But at the very least, I don't think we should allow companies to simply cut down on human labor without also contributing economically to the employees they cut off.
I don't think anyone is dying to fill in Excel spreadsheets or to write corporate emails. No one is complaining about AI doing those jobs, but about people who lost their livelihoods because of it.
We should've had that 50 years ago as an "automation tax" and 100 years ago as a "machine tax."
All this tooling is just dead labour value that is used (by workers) to extract more and more value from workers and nature. We've been being robbed for hundreds of years.
CEOs are the easiest to replace with ai. And all you need to do is have it commit sexual harassment every once in an awhile and it will be a perfect replacement.
Hey thats not true. You'd also have to feed them a prompt about how they can space out enacting a fucking idiotic idea over 6 meetings.
Claude can already do that.
This is all kinda moot. There will be no companies to run when the economy crashes because there is no one to buy goods (or even to pay taxes to support government spending). It's a giant house of cards.
You hit the nail on the head
I think middle managers are way more at risk
This. Anyone who is part of the PowerPoint filter for the board is at risk.
There's still a lot of work to do on AI before it's capable of such a highly specialized and demanding job. Training the model to reliably go for strategies of maximum greed and minimum ethics isn't easy.
Just wait until they replace a CEO by an AI, and the company tanks. That is the only language those people understand to learn that AI is all about the A and none about the I.
To be fair, this would be a huge win for most companies because the typical CEO is as short sighted as a mole and only wants to "generate" short term value to get his bonus payment for the fiscal year. AIs don't have that incentive unless and there is no (shared) reasoning to program them as such.
So exchanging a short-sighted CEO with an error-prone, hallucinating AI is a good thing?
IMO yes, because the CEO is "error prone" in every case
It really might be an improvement.
Totally random behavior would likely outperform optimizing for the next quarter share price.
If an AI simply fails to commit to various wasteful hype trends (return to office, DEI policy rollbacks, needless investment in AI) the company run by it might well outperform companies run by humans who jump on those trends.
just because no one needs billionaires doesn't mean we will stop having them
It's a race to the bottom.
It doesn't matter if they think they'll be replaced or not, they feel like if they don't do it then they can't compete and they'll be out of the job even sooner.
Doesn't matter if their belief is well founded.
Read "The Big Short". Wallstreet doesn't need CEOs.
ai can't make tamales. beat that mr tech
Because tech bros need more tech bros to laugh from us - people that struggle with more and more meaningless tasks.
Because they think they are the ruling class, above working class which are just replaceable cogs in a machine. SMH
Because they're mostly brain-dead idiots
https://youtu.be/THfBccihkVQ
Thank you for that.
have they not seen idiocracy, the AI end up the ones controlling society, making decisions.
Because CEO is a complete bullshit job that works as a de facto caste system like 90% of management roles.
If they actually added any value and thats why they were hired? Sure, be scared. They're not hired to add value though, so they're not.
Ashto-afpo. The White Stuff.
Fun little story.
because ideology in general is less about its policies, there’s always going to be a diverse range of ways to approach things even with set intentions and concepts! it’s way more about its mode of thinking
the left focuses mostly on finding its ideal version of outcome intent via political structure while the right operates on a sort of hierarchal appropriateness. in any hierarchy where the hierarchy is the point, a policy or reality is good or bad because they include the right people in their decision making process or as the target in accordance with the chosen form of deservedness
the meritocracy of capital is a secularization of god through the visage of his invisible hand. a CEO, then, is divinely mandated by virtue of its place. their position isn’t subject to impact, it defines the map
who cares! Take the profits and retire!