I’d said for years that you could replace most CEOs with a random number generator and just save a lot of money with no downsides, and this is just a slightly better version of that so I feel vindicated
In 90+% of companies the CEO is an active liability who is unlikely to do anything but harm, while being a massive expense to keep on payroll. If any company tried to actually maximize profits step 1 would be firing your CEO or changing their pay to be the minimum entry level you pay your employees, because it’s universally the job with the lowest requirements in a company. If there is one job in any company that you could pick any person of the street and they’d do as good if not better than who you currently have it’s CEO. The only reason this doesn’t happen is because the fox is guarding the hen house, and obviously CEOs aren’t going to decide to eliminate their own positions.
For larger corporations I imagine a lot of the operational side does not need much guidance. Actions taken by the C-suite or consultancies that have positive outcome I imagine are in the overwhelming majority of cases taking credit for normal growth, or in crisis periods just regression to the mean.
I remember someone recently crediting Starbucks's revenue growth in an era in the wake of the great recession and when unemployment rapidly declined as being due to a logo rebrand. And it's like do you seriously not check other economic factors. The notable change in revenue growth is a decline during the great recession and a catch up after.
the fox is guarding the hen house, and obviously CEOs aren’t going to decide to eliminate their own positions
This is a great point. The only people who could be adequately critical of a CEO aren't in a position to oust them, and the ones who are in that position are huffing the same paint as the CEO.
But management is a real skill, as is running a large organization. "CEOs are rock stars that radically improve companies singlehandedly" is a bad take, but so is "anyone off the street could do a competent job running a national company."
It’s not so much “anyone off the street could do a competent job running a national company” as much as “the average CEO is no better at doing a competent job running a national company than a random person off the street, and are often actively worse than random”
It’s the same as Congress. Our current system actively selects for people who are bad at the job, so in comparison to that a random lottery would be an improvement.
80% of being a good manager is navigating the dumb ass enviroments people above you have created so your team can still function, which is to say, you don't need to do that as a CEO
(one of) the scary things about these models is how little your average person understands/cares to learn how they work and what their limitations are. I know that's a lot to ask, but then you hear about things like this and :agony: people are definitely getting fucked for no reason, because people see these models as like Jarvis.
Reminds me of some students getting flagged as cheating because someone asked chatgpt and thought it couldn't make mistakes.
For sure, the ability of these models to produce very convincing looking output creates an illusion of intelligence and understanding that isn't there. It's very easy for people to become convinced that the model really knows what it's talking about. In that regard, they're not really that different from CEOs. :)
As someone who has worked with both CEOs and generative AI extensively, I agree that most CEOs would see improved performance from being replaced in whole or in part with generative AI. However, this is not an endorsement of generative AI, but an indictment of the CEO.
Large language models can't golf and drink martini lunches so they'd actually be pretty poor CEOs. They'd do the "read a quarterly report prepared by Marketing out loud" part well though
I can’t wait until this doesn’t work and the people in charge get giant severance packages while the workers who were forced to implement this shitty idea lose their jobs! This is indeed the most rational economic system that accounts for human needs!
The dumbass guy that ran the last place I worked used ChatGPT to make a “marketing plan” for artists they were signing and it was the most boiler plate obv shit. It effectively spit out a buzzfeed article or something like that on marketing an artist.
“Have social media, engage with fans, get on playlists!” lol no shit
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them
I've always wanted to test what would happen to a firm that just tries not having a CEO. I think a lot of companies' bureaucracy would hum a long just fine
this is fucking hilarious, do people really not see how vapid and meaningless most of the slop generated by language models is? especially regarding any 'advice' applications XD
My friend asked ChatGPT if his personal business plan was a good idea, ChatGPT said it was an excellent plan and he'll make his first million soon. He was very excited about it.
I'd ask if he made that first million already but I hardly see him because he's always busy driving Uber and flipping cars, when he's not at his full time job. I'm sure he'll be rich soon.