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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
Edit: I'm not sure this is even sarcasm. The world is just a deeply stupid place, today.
Because they're not just CEOs, they're extremely wealthy CEOs with portfolios with deep investments in AI.
Because current 'ai' can't even run a vending machine business
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.
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.
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.
Because it's not about productivity. It's about separating people into owners and toilers.
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.
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.
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.
You hit the nail on the head
I think middle managers are way more at risk
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.
just because no one needs billionaires doesn't mean we will stop having them
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?
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.
Because they think they are the ruling class, above working class which are just replaceable cogs in a machine. SMH
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 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.
have they not seen idiocracy, the AI end up the ones controlling society, making decisions.
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.