[dreamcompiler]

> So much this, when you see Zuck or even Jensen Huang saying "software engineers won't be needed anymore" and being excited about it you get pissed off as a software engineer lol.

The real story nobody is saying out loud is that CEOs are much more replaceable by AI than are software engineers.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

Exactly zero management or executive positions at my workplace have had the “can an AI do this?” exercise intended to explore ways of reducing headcount.

[JimDabell]

CEO is the one job role that AI can’t take because AI lacks accountability. Who is the person using the AI that will get blamed by the board if they screw up? That’s the CEO, even if you decide to give them a different title.

[conartist6]

CEOs also lack real accountability though. Every time something goes really wrong they claim that they have no responsibility because people below them caused the problems.

How the F do you square that circle? If you're at the top you either are responsible or you aren't.

[richardw]

That applies to many roles. Lawyer AI can’t actually lawyer because someone needs to be accountable. War fighting AI needs to know where to kill. Doctor AI needs handholding. If we can find a legal construct for an AI surgeon operating on your child I think we can find one for an agent running a marketing company working on shareholders behalf.

[re-thc]

> Who is the person using the AI that will get blamed by the board if they screw up?

The AI will get blamed and they can switch from OpenAI to Claude to something else.

[n4r9]

Yeah, the accountability argument doesn't make sense to me from a practical viewpoint. The benefit of accountability is that it provides a path to avoiding repeated errors. There are other ways to achieve this using software tools.

[wisty]

You can get a pretty good accountant for $100k I think. They could vet the AI decisions and take responsibility.

[taneq]

I've been saying for a long time that the real definition of 'personhood' is the ability to take liability. If something can be sued in court (not counting civil forfeiture sophistry) then it counts as a person.

[autoexec]

How about "If it gets sentenced to prison time" instead because corporations routinely get sued in court only to be charged a small percentage of the profit they make through criminal activity and that isn't "liability" it's just paying the justice system a cut of the action as a cost of doing business.

[ulfw]

What accountability does Elon Reeve Musk, richest grifter on the planet and CEO of half a dozen companies ever face? An AI can be turned off and replaced at any time.

[hakfoo]

CEOs are replaceable by a bag of D20s. Let's not waste the watts on a LLM.

[eddythompson80]

> The real story nobody is saying out loud is that CEOs are much more replaceable by AI than are software engineers.

Sorry, but that’s not true at all. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Who is replacing the CEO of a company with AI? The board? The board doesn’t want/can’t run the company. They will hire someone to “run the CEO AI”? Won’t that just be a CEO using AI? Maybe that makes it so the CEO is paid less Because now they just run OpenCEOv4? I don’t see it happening though. Also a very large portion of the day to day of CEO level execs at those big companies interpersonal and/or performative. You won’t be replacing that with AI anytime soon. You still need a face of it at the end of the day.

[conartist6]

Lets say that CEOs are no more or less replaceable with AI than all the other jobs.

Throwing away all the humans to replace them with AIs is a move only an AI CEO would make, because and AI couldn't give less of a shit if something it does blows up in its face. Well, apparently real CEOs couldn't care less either. Imagining you're going to run a successful software organization (once you've hollowed out the people who both understand the work and actually give a shit about it) is insane. These people know that it will blow up, but they hope that it is only after they can rake in their bonus pay for the mounds of short term profits that result form layoffs, after which they'll float away under their golden parachutes leaving their former companies to collapse under the weight of institutionalized incompetence.

[disqard]

Yes, I agree with the picture you're painting here, but it befuddles me where all these grifters think they'll go?

They'll have to live in bunkers for the rest of their lives.

Imagine that you're one of them, and you want to go watch a game (or a T. Swift concert) -- so you hop on your private jet and go to the stadium/arena. If you happen to be caught on-camera and your face is up there, on the Jumbotron, every single person there is gonna boo you. That's what your life will be like. What's the point?

[majewsky]

They'll just fly Taylor in for a private concert. Everybody has a price.

[disqard]

You are right, and you made me sadder. Have an upboat.

[justinclift]

> Well, apparently real CEOs couldn't care less either.

Some healthcare ones did for a few weeks, after one of them got whacked by someone truly over their bullshit.

[re-thc]

> You still need a face of it at the end of the day.

Wasn't that the whole point of AI generated images / video?

[eddythompson80]

No? That makes no sense.

[butlike]

Flip the script. The CEO AI runs the company. No one runs the CEO AI.

> You still need a face of it at the end of the day.

Feel like that one's solved with 30 seconds on DALL-E

[eddythompson80]

again, that also makes no sense. If AI reaches that level of competence, then why would it only replace the CEO position or be better at being a CEO than say a people's manager? an engineer, HR, legal, sales, marketing etc? In fact, why not just create an "All AI company". you just register it, and run OpenCompanyAI, feed it some parameters "You are a company selling

[butlike]

I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities; CEO is just what the conversation was focused on.

[whywhywhywhy]

This just isn't true unfortunately, but the angle of attack that is true is AI replacing the need for the rest of the company for you to be able to make money as an individual.