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by dileeparanawake 306 days ago
It’s so interesting have asked this myself a lot. So firstly - it think this would be an excellent use of AI but the barriers are;

1. Political - CEOs have significant purchasing power. 2. Obfuscation - engineering is (relatively tightly defined) but being a CEO is often more fluid and a lot of the decision making is wrapped in stuff like ‘gut’ instinct. There’s no docs for a CEO. 3. Cultural - we treat CEO’s like art and idolise their value instead of looking at them like a node, that aggregates organisational data flows. To me a CEO is a little like a model router - but with more politics.

I think there’s a huge opportunity to replace CEOs but I think like in engineering that doesn’t happen in one shot - it happens by devolving responsibilities.

I personally stepped down from the business stuff running startups and small companies because to me it feels like BS and into engineering so perhaps I’m biased.

When I ask my CEO mates they’re obviously dogmatically convinced they are irreplaceable.

But I think the devil is in the detail. I’m a relatively junior engineer and was crapping myself about ai taking every entry level job - until you get into it and realise there’s a lot more nuance. At least near term. Same for CEO’s.

I’d love a world where we can focus on engineering outcomes, not the political crap that weighs us down.

My TLDR is I think the main barrier is political, not pure engineering.

But I suppose / hope we can re-engineer the political, with effort.