Blazing a New Leadership Trail - The AI CEO
The notion an AI CEO is not simply a notion of the future but it is one direction some companies are considering as technology gets better and better. While the notion of a corporate-controlled artificial-intelligence entity certainly feels far creepier and cooler, it also presents a number of unique, not-quite-utopian dilemmas.
The Rewards of an AI CEO
Greater Efficiency and Speed of Decision Making One of the major promises of having an AI CEO is the capability to, process immense data pools, super-fast, which otherwise a human could not match. This means decisions can be made at the speed of the market or even faster. And IBM's Watson, for instance, can plow through 500 gigabytes per second (that's a million books).
Leadership AI 15 A New Level of O bjectivity in Leadership If AI is to provide new levels of objectivity, an AI leader does more than just tally up pre-determined sources of data and average out their predictions in ways a human leader never could. They are devoid of personal biases or emotions that heavily bias a human being's decision-making process. Your internal systems could start to influence automated decisions that are simply in the best interests of the business and associated stakeholders.
This allowed AI CEOs to run without breaks or vacations and an AI CEO can do hundreds of things simultaneously - all of which proved to be much woerk scalable and adaptable to the needs of the company. Definitely something that might save your neck in industries where a quick response time is important.
The Risks of an AI CEO
Intelligence vs Insight and Ethics: AI is good at making decisions based on data, but lacks human intuition and may not be so great at understanding complex social dynamics and ethical considerations. This often resulted in decisions that were technically correct, but resulted in damage to the companys reputation or unhappiness from the employee voted down.
Cybersecurity Threats The very nature of the power that a machine learning-based AI holds over a company places it at an extreme risk of cybersecurity threats. This weak arguments in favour of a compromised cake-taker, this argument depends on a terribly weak and scary setup not based in reality (ignoring the "aint a real world" thing) an AI CEO would make mortally consequential decision points that as AI's would allow information to be released. One of the ways that AI can be hacked is through hacking its models-for example a data leak can have severe consequences on the company's finances and reputation, leading to abuse of the function of the AI (funds flow out of control or allowing sensitive information to go public).
Regulatory and Compliance Hurdles There could be multiple regulatory implications with the sitting of an AI CEO. Then there are the laws and guidelines surrounding corporate governance, which are of course written from a human perspective and it is not easily understandable how they should apply to an AI operating at such a level of autonony.
Getting Ready for an AI-Pushed Corporate Future
With companies mulling AI insertion in the highest executive roles, it goes without saying that a good thought of all the varied risks and rewards is warranted. Creating rigorous cyber-protections, clear ethics frameworks and compliance standards are all part of the path forward for benefiting from AI CEOs while limiting (not eliminating) its risks.
ConclusionThe point of the AI CEO debate is not whether they will exist, but how we will effectively and responsibly co-evolve with them. If we manage the risks and optimize the rewards, the future of corporate governance might just work with part-human, part-computer intelligence.