As artificial intelligence programs shake up the office and potentially eliminate millions of jobs, one group of constantly stressed workers appears to be particularly at risk.
These employees analyze new markets and identify trends, both tasks that a computer could do more efficiently. They spend much of their time communicating with colleagues, a tedious activity that is automated using voice and image generators. Sometimes they have to make difficult decisions – and who better to be dispassionate than a machine?
Finally, these jobs pay very well, meaning the cost savings from eliminating them are significant.
The CEO is increasingly at risk from AI, as are the press release writer and customer service representative. Dark factories that are fully automated may soon have a counterpart at the top of the corporation: Dark Suites.
This is not just a prediction. Some successful companies have begun publicly experimenting with the idea of an AI leader, although for now it may be largely a matter of branding.
AI has been touted as the solution to all business problems for about 18 months since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022. Silicon Valley poured $29 billion into generative AI last year and is selling it hard. Even in its current rudimentary form, AI that mimics human thinking is finding its way into struggling companies that have little to lose and lack strong leadership.
“In struggling companies, you start by replacing operations management, but you probably keep a few people who think beyond the machines,” said Saul J. Berman, a former senior consulting partner at IBM. Overall, he said, “The changes brought about by AI in organizations will be as big or even bigger at the higher strategic levels of management than at the lower echelons.”
The CEOs themselves seem excited about the prospect – or perhaps just fatalistic.
EdX, the online learning platform created by administrators at Harvard and MIT and now part of publicly traded 2U Inc., surveyed hundreds of CEOs and other executives on the topic last summer. Respondents were invited to participate and given what edX called “a small financial incentive” to participate.
The response was astonishing. Nearly half – 47 percent – of executives surveyed said they believe “most” or “all” of the CEO role should be fully automated or replaced by AI. Even executives believe that leaders are unnecessary in the late digital age.
When Anant Agarwal, the founder of edX and former director of MIT’s Computer Science and AI Lab, saw the 47 percent for the first time, his first reaction was that executives should say something completely different.
“My first instinct is that they would say, ‘Replace all the staff but not me,'” he said. “But I thought deeper and would say that 80 percent of the work a CEO does can be replaced by AI.”
This includes writing, summarizing and admonishing employees. More subtly, AI – if it reaches any of the levels promised by its salespeople – will democratize the work of top management, even if it is scaled back.
“There used to be a curve of people who were good with numbers and those who weren’t,” Mr. Agarwal said. “Then the calculator came along and provided the great balance. I believe AI will do the same for literacy. Anyone could be a CEO”
The work for the robots has been a long time coming, at least in the realm of popular culture. The first use of the term “robot boss” may have been in a 1939 story by David C. Cooke in a pulp magazine simply titled “Science Fiction.” It wasn’t an encouraging story about mentorship and peer support.
“Remember,” says the robot boss, “my photon cannon shoots faster than you can run, so don’t try to escape.”
Many science fiction stories and films followed that portrayed the human-machine relationship in an equally dark light. Still, real people seemed perversely excited by the idea. In a 2017 survey of 1,000 British workers commissioned by an online accounting firm, 42 percent said they were “comfortable” taking orders on a computer.
Long before the current AI boom, Jack Ma, then CEO of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, predicted that in 30 years “a robot will probably be on the cover of Time magazine as the best CEO.” were faster and more rational than humans and were not driven by emotions such as anger.
Chinese online gaming company NetDragon Websoft, which employs 5,000 people, appointed a so-called “AI-driven rotating CEO” named Tang Yu in 2022. “We believe that AI is the future of business management,” said company founder Dejian Liu, adding that this is part of NetDragon’s entry into the “metaverse-based working community.”
Tang Yu, portrayed as a woman, does not appear on an online chart of NetDragon’s management team, but the company announced last month that she had won “the coveted title of ‘China’s Best Virtual Employee of the Year'” at the China Forum digital human industry. Another executive accepted the award on her behalf. According to the company, NetDragon’s AI team of employees is responsible for, among other things, performance evaluations and mentoring.
On the other side of the world, upscale Polish rum company Dictador announced in November that it had an AI humanoid CEO, Mika. She announced on LinkedIn that she was “free from personal bias and makes unbiased and strategic decisions that put the best interests of the organization first.”
Executives at the National Association of Chief Executive Officers may have something to say about the trend — if only to deny it — but the website doesn’t list any actual people associated with the group. No response was received to a message sent via the “Contact Us” prompt.
Humanity’s AI experts warned that we are still at the beginning of a transition, but said it was a natural progression.
“We have always outsourced our work. Now we outsource intelligence,” said Vinay Menon, who leads the global AI practice at consulting firm Korn Ferry. He warned: “While you may not need the same number of leaders, you will still need leadership.”
On the one hand, people take responsibility in a way that machines cannot. “Some may be using AI to prevent people from having to take on fiduciary responsibilities,” said Sean Earley, managing director of management consulting firm Teneo. “At what point does a mistake become culpable?”
“Never” was the position one company recently took in court. A customer filed a lawsuit against Air Canada for refusing to provide a death fare discount promised by a chatbot on the airline’s website. The customer filed his complaint in small claims court. Air Canada argued in its defense that it could not be held liable for information provided by any of its agents, servants or representatives – including a chatbot.
The judge ruled against the airline and in favor of the passenger in February, but the risk that a company would argue that its own AI couldn’t be trusted didn’t bode well for AI management teams. Air Canada declined to comment.
Much of the discussion about AI in the workplace over the past year has centered around how rank-and-file employees are at risk if they don’t integrate new technologies into their jobs – of course, without their jobs becoming the risks that AI automation has faced in the past Risk, even if it benefits investors and managers.
Now the tables are turned. Researchers speculate that automation at the executive level could even help employees at lower levels.
“Someone who is fairly advanced in their career and already reasonably self-motivated may no longer need a human boss,” said Phoebe V. Moore, professor of management and the future of work at the University of Essex Business School. “In this case, self-management software can actually improve workers’ freedom of choice.”
The pandemic has prepared people for this. Many office workers worked from home in 2020, and quite a few still do so, at least several days a week. Communication with colleagues and managers takes place via machines. It’s just a small step to communicating with a machine that doesn’t have a human on the other end.
“Some people like the social aspects of a human boss,” Ms. Moore said. “But after Covid, for many people it’s okay not to have one.”
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2024-05-28 09:01:06
www.nytimes.com
