Christopher DeVargas
Get ready for round-the-clock emails from your CEO.
US companies will soon face pressure from rivals and investors to elevate AI to the top of the org chart — not just as a C-suite helper — but as co-CEO or perhaps even as a stand-alone chief. That’s the prediction of futurist Michael Tchong, who’s spent decades writing about the role of tech in business.
AI’s gains in efficiency are starting to challenge traditional executive functions, including decision-making, forecasting, and risk modeling, he told Business Insider. Add in investors’ endless demands for efficiency, Tchong said, and you’re all but promoting AI to co-CEO.
“It becomes inevitable,” he told Business Insider.
Tchong expects that early corporate adopters will help create competitive pressures that lead other companies to install boss bots.
“If you don’t have an AI co-CEO,” Tchong said, “you’re going to be seen as being corporately deficient in the way you’re handling your affairs.”
Chatter about AI in the office tends to stir fears that a bot takeover will make loads of desk workers as necessary as reply-all email chains. Yet when it comes to the C-suite, the discussion often centers on leaders’ plans for AI — not the reverse.
Pressure to perform
Many leaders are already using AI. Yet what Tchong predicts is more than just a CEO querying ChatGPT about strategy. One result of AI bosses would be tireless leaders who could fire off emails at any hour — perhaps not unlike some humans — and tinker continually with a company’s operations.
Having AI in the corner office could be an outgrowth of the pressure that many companies already face to talk about AI. Corporate leaders often discuss their investments in the technology and the payoffs they’re hoping to get or already seeing.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a recent podcast that the company had slashed about 4,000 customer-support roles because AI agents were taking on so much work at the tech giant.
What tends to get less airtime is how AI could refashion the C-suite — not just the duties of workaday desk jockeys.
Tchong said examples of corporate chiefs handing duties like reporting quarterly results to AI are indicators that more leaders could get comfortable having digital sidekicks who share titles and never take PTO. And a handful of companies outside the US have named AI leaders.
Already, various leaders, including Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, have said AI could do their jobs. Tamay Besiroglu, who cofounded and runs the startup Mechanize, wants to use AI to automate every role, including those of execs like himself. Others, like Sam Liang, CEO and cofounder of the note-taking app Otter, expect more top leaders will soon use avatars to attend meetings and field questions.
Look out, CEOs
Tchong said investor pressure could also make it more likely that some companies name AI as CEO, not just co-CEO.
“The inevitable conclusion that everyone will reach is that, ‘Hey, your co-CEO is already doing a fabulous job at optimizing your profits. Why can’t it also run the whole company?'” he said.
Yet not everyone thinks workers will toil under digital bosses.
“I think the CEO always remains a human,” Tom Gimbel, founder of the staffing firm LaSalle Network, told Business Insider.
Gimbel, who is the incoming chairman of the American Staffing Association, said that CEOs lean on advisors, attorneys, accountants, and their boards to help navigate business decisions. On top of that, he said, chiefs now have AI to help outline various scenarios.
The risk to workers, he said, is when they complete certain tasks that AI might be able to take on. That’s different from leadership jobs that are “100% decision-making,” Gimbel said.
“Those jobs aren’t going anywhere,” he said.
Tchong said that because AI tools are already embedded at the executive level, it will just take time before the technology handles managerial work.
He said one immediate concern is about what happens if an AI leader makes a mistake. Yet, Tchong said, that would make the bots similar to human beings, who also have “bouts of fantasy.”
In a scenario where AI is a co-CEO, he said the bot’s human counterpart could lead in areas involving a company’s strategic vision, responding to a crisis, or where emotional intelligence is useful.
“I would give him the informal title of ‘chief empathy officer,’ because that’s what an AI can’t do,” Tchong said. AI, for its part, could work to optimize a company’s operations and take over “laborious tasks” that even CEOs might not like to do, he said.
Wall Street could be a driver, too, Tchong said. That’s because he expects that companies with AI in at least one driver’s seat will outperform, and, as a result, investors will demand to see more tech with a decision-making role.
And, unlike highly paid C-suiters, bots would be far cheaper, Tchong said.
“The AI CEO does not demand a $29 billion salary,” he said.
The post Sorry, CEOs. This futurist predicts AI bots are coming for the C-suite. appeared first on Business Insider.
