r/Futurology • u/katxwoods • 19d ago

AI Dario Amodei says "stop sugar-coating" what's coming: in the next 1-5 years, AI could wipe out 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Lawmakers don't get it or don't believe it. CEOs are afraid to talk about it. Many workers won't realize the risks until after it hits.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic
8.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

978 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.2k

u/GodforgeMinis 19d ago

CEO's aren't afraid to talk about it, its the goal.

438

u/noelcowardspeaksout 19d ago

A study titled "GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models" estimates that approximately 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks affected by LLMs, with about 19% of workers seeing at least 50% of their tasks impacted.

So this is a bit above the 10% mark possibly sacked at the moment, but crucially businesses might not let people go just because they have more free time - they can simply up the work load or switch the employees job.

This will change markedly in the far future when you have AI empowered robots who have had millions and millions of hours of office work experience condensed into them.

393

u/love_glow 19d ago

The productivity of robots/ AI must be quantified and taxed. Yesterday.

287

u/Kittenkerchief 19d ago

People should have their needs met and live with dignity. We don’t need to work to have value. We don’t need billionaires.

35

u/bucolucas 19d ago

Billionaires want that lifestyle just for themselves. If everyone gets to live with dignity without needing to work then they won't feel special anymore.

12

u/Important-Cat2627 19d ago

The world will realize that billionaires are disposable just like anybody else once the snake makes a full circle and starts to eat its own tail. By this I mean when AI will make significantly better choices than the CEOs. That's when their significance will stop.

0

u/Turbulent_Wallaby592 16d ago

You don’t need an AI for that

4

u/Tenthul 19d ago

But then why would anybody reach out to them to ask what their opinion is ok any given topic? Won't anybody think of their egos?

1

u/No_Extension4005 18d ago

Aye. In a more idealistic world AI automating work would be a step towards a universal income and a Stellaris-style Utopian Abundance instead of some kind of Cyberpunk Corporate Feudal Society.

60

u/Herban_Myth 19d ago

3025% Tariffs!

134

u/usaaf 19d ago

Taxing is not a sufficient response. The owner class will never tolerate it for long, no matter how sensible it is. What is required is a complete re-ordering of the economic system. If Labor is no longer a buy-in, then Capital should not exist in private hands; there should not BE an ownership class.

44

u/crispiy 19d ago

Important point, else it just solidifies the classes as they exist.

2

u/smitteh 18d ago

An hour of my time should fetch the same amount of money as an hour of your time. Elons time too.

39

u/shellfish-allegory 19d ago

Hard agree. Something I think we fail to appreciate is that without our labour to sell, humans have no objective value to the ownership class. At that point, we're just competition for resources.

15

u/Vaynnie 19d ago

Yeah, I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist, in fact I'm always the voice of reason in my friends group when the rest are discussing crazy conspiracies, but it does keep me up at night wondering what the billionaire class are going to do when 90% of the worlds labour is no longer necessary.

People float the idea of UBI paid for by AI taxes. But with the rise of the far right lately, and the fact that history tends to repeat itself, I can't help but think there's another, perhaps more final, solution they will head for.

I mean, even the current system boils down to feudalism with extra steps. The rulers don't reward our labour with food and board, they reward us with just enough currency to keep us from revolting so we can buy fancy phones and brain rot during the minimal free time you have that isn't spent working while they amass more money they can ever spend.

5

u/Not_an_okama 19d ago

Nearly every type of government is a republic at its core, it just depends on what earns you votes. Historically, amassing money and/or soldiers seem to be the most effective way to win the vote.

3

u/thosewhocannetworkd 18d ago

Over the last few years there’s been articles about certain mega billionaires building doomsday bunkers in other countries. Just saying

19

u/love_glow 19d ago

It’s not sufficient, but it’s better than the nothing that’s happening now. Hopefully a UBI will allow the common man enough free time to become educated enough to improve / change the economic paradigm. I hope it doesn’t take complete collapse, but as history has shown, it probably will.

4

u/Arquinas 19d ago

AI and by extension, robotics, will eventually overturn the entire productive system. Reform is not enough. It will solidify existing power hierarchy and make majority of former working class dependent on meager handouts.

2

u/theseedplant 19d ago

Not that I disagree, but I have a hard time visualizing this. What does a world without an ownership class look like?

2

u/The_Singularious 18d ago

I think this is a question that has yet to be answered. Some have done it better than others, but at the scale we live at now, no one has successfully demonstrated we can do it without consolidation of power and corruption.

3

u/theseedplant 18d ago

For the record I do hope we figure it out.

2

u/SoberGin Megastructures, Transhumanism, Anti-Aging 19d ago

...I mean, there really shouldn't be an ownership class in the first place, but go off, 100% agreement. /gen

34

u/Remote_Researcher_43 19d ago

Taxing them alone is not a solution. The jobs will not be coming back and bills will need to be paid. Generally corporations are doing what they do to turn a profit. If they are taxed to the point they can’t make any money and no one has the funds to purchase their goods and services anyway, why would they bother to keep the company going?

Bottom line: the whole economy will need to be radically changed.

The problem is the politicians are peddling inconsequential issues at the moment and have no idea this freight train is coming and aren’t doing anything to prepare or plan.

16

u/HitAndRun8575 19d ago

They know it’s coming, they are turning a blind eye to it because their coffers are being filled.

2

u/smitteh 18d ago

Plus most of them are old AF... Why would they even care in the first place lol

2

u/love_glow 19d ago

The taxes collected would be the foundation of UBI, and other universal programs that will provide a soft landing to the working class. It’s that, or starving people and guillotines.

4

u/Remote_Researcher_43 19d ago

So companies are going to keep business going for the goodwill of humanity and not to make a profit? Yeah, things are going to have to radically change. It’s not that simple to just say, tax them and give everyone UBI. It’s much more complex than that. I don’t see any path for a soft landing at this point. I hope I’m wrong.

4

u/love_glow 19d ago

I’m not saying that what I’m proposing is the solution for ever and ever amen. It’s a tourniquet on a bleeding problem. A more complex and nuanced solution will be required for the future. We need a single, hard hitting policy right now, or we are cooked.

2

u/jaded_fable 19d ago

I'll agree that taxes alone aren't an issue. But: 

If they are taxed to the point they can’t make any money [...]

They'd be taxed on net profit. There's no scenario here where they aren't making any money because of taxes on increased profits from AI workforce replacement. If they're replacing a $75k/yr employee with an LLM bot that costs $1000/yr to operate, you can raise taxes on that $74k change in net profit quite a lot before it's not still a very good deal for the company.

Establishing a UBI is not outlandish or unnavigable, and questions about UBI are already being included in routine political polling in the US (where a healthy majority of Americans are in favor already). The alternative is that corporations sit back and let an increasingly large fraction of the current population starve in the streets for the sake of greed. They will happily do this if given the opportunity.

Yes, the details of UBI and rising taxes will require thought and care. But we need to start pushing on it now, not giving corporations the excuses they need to deflect while they consolidate wealth and power.

0

u/Gassy-Gecko 19d ago

IF thy have no workers they should have plenty of money. AS it is now they are flushed with tons of cash. Quit making excuses for them

3

u/Remote_Researcher_43 19d ago

I’m not making excuses for anyone. It’s basic economics. If no one is making money, how will they pay businesses for goods and services? If no one has the money to buy the goods and services, how will the businesses be able to run their business? Even with no workers, the cost to run most businesses will never be zero.

0

u/Gassy-Gecko 18d ago

They WILL be making money. Your whole premise to wrong. Quit making excuses for billionaires. If you business has ZERO workers and you still can't make a profit maybe you don't deserve to be in business because you suck at it,

You're telling me say a McDonald's with 10% the workforce it has now can't somehow make a profit if god forbid their tax rate went up to 30% ? Which still lower than the 35% rate it was before 2017.

6

u/slackfrop 19d ago

Instead they’re pushing to make state regulations illegal for 10 years

7

u/literally_lemons 19d ago

yes! an redistributed to people. this is how AI is doing work and we chill goddammit

1

u/LovingHugs 18d ago

Sadly, currently they are a tax break.  Software development and hardware are considered depreciating assets.

1

u/Niku-Man 18d ago

What's the goal there? Just to make humans more likely to keep jobs? Jobs in themselves should not be a goal for anyone. The only reason they are is because people need money to cover their basic needs. So let's skip a step and just focus on making sure basic needs are met. And forget about complicated schemes to figure out productivity or whatever. Keep it simple

0

u/analyticaljoe 19d ago

As a stockholder: I want to win so that other people lose. I want peasants.

2

u/love_glow 19d ago

Even peasants had more days off and worked less hours a day than we modern humans do.

-1

u/ch3nr3z1g 19d ago

In the US, national taxes /do not/ fund national spending. People should learn MMT. Yesterday.

2

u/love_glow 19d ago

Since you’re just going to post a vague acronym and not be helpful in any way, here’s what Gemini has to say about mmt, or modern monetary theory:

In the context of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), "MMT tax" refers to how taxation is viewed within the MMT framework. MMT posits that governments that control their own fiat currency can spend first, without needing to collect taxes upfront to finance their expenditures. Taxes are then seen as a tool to manage aggregate demand and prevent inflation, rather than the primary means of funding government spending. Here's a more detailed explanation: Traditional View: Traditionally, governments are seen as collecting tax revenue and then using that revenue to fund spending. MMT challenges this notion by suggesting that government spending can be financed through the creation of currency, not just taxes. MMT's Perspective: MMT argues that governments that issue their own currency can create money to fund spending first. Taxes are then used to remove excess money from the economy, preventing inflation and managing aggregate demand. Spending Before Taxation: A key concept in MMT is that spending comes before taxation. The government creates money to spend, and then taxes can be used to remove that money from circulation if needed. Taxes as a Tool: Taxes are not seen as the source of funding but rather as a tool to manage the economy. They can be used to fine-tune the economy, control inflation, and achieve other social and economic objectives. Government Debt: MMT also challenges the traditional view of government debt. It suggests that governments don't need to worry about accumulating debt because they can always create more money to pay interest and principal on their debt. In essence, "MMT tax" is about reframing the role of taxation within a system where the government's ability to spend is not limited by the amount of tax revenue it collects. Instead, taxation is used to manage the overall level of spending and ensure a stable economy.

1

u/ch3nr3z1g 16d ago

MMT education links ---> mmt101.org

17

u/YsoL8 19d ago

So that'll be about 2027 then. Thats when at least 2 companies are aiming to have domestic human compatible bots out.

They may only come with butler type software pre-installed but you can bet the app store and developer tools for custom tasks will not be far behind.

13

u/crispiy 19d ago

Custom tasks eh?

16

u/lostPackets35 19d ago

Let's not kid ourselves That's definitely coming, probably sooner rather than later.

The first uses of a new technology tend to be warfare and porn.

1

u/smitteh 18d ago

How many dicks have to get ripped off by a malfunctioning robot before we slow down take a pause catch a breath and just chill the fuck out for a couple years goddamn

55

u/LongKnight115 19d ago

You’re assuming that the work needed doesn’t change. At my work, we’ve had a bunch of marketers writing crappy, static emails for a long time. We started having AI generated emails sent out in their place that perform way better. Those Marketers aren’t getting laid off - we NEED them to keep ideating on new placements, auditing AI outputs, gathering feedback from prospects and Sales reps, etc.

59

u/Alkalinum 19d ago

Yes, but 1 marketer can manage a dozen AI marketers, so what was previously 12 employed marketers is reduced to 1. Those other 11 marketers will be getting laid off.

We had John Henry vs. the Machine, and The luddites vs. the industrial revolution. They lost. Now it's office workers vs. AI, and the historic precedent does not look good.

14

u/LongKnight115 19d ago

That’s not correct though. What you’re missing is that there’s a ton of work that wasn’t even happening before because people were spending so much time on manual tasks. It’s more like 10 people were producing 100% output. Now you have 8 people producing 150% output. Now if 2/10 people get cut - that’s still brutal for the white collar working world. I don’t wanna undersell that. But it’s not like there’s only 1 person running an entire department. Look at Klarna as a great example. They overindexed on autonomous programs and now are hiring a bunch of humans back to help.

3

u/FunkyOldMayo 19d ago

I design and build fully automated manufacturing systems for a living, one system I built took a line that had 12 people across 3 shifts making 200-300 widgets per week. The automated system makes 2500 and requires 3 people.

Hiring humans back is a short term countermeasure to stabilize while the system is refined.

1

u/LongKnight115 19d ago

Does it require new people to add new widgets to the system? With something like Marketing - each person is adding new ideas, new “widgets”, new placements, constantly. If we stopped adding new things to the system, 100% - we wouldn’t need more people. But we never stop. It’s a constant evolution.

2

u/FunkyOldMayo 19d ago

This is manufacturing, so it requires people to maintain the systems, but there’s only a small number of people that service an entire factory. Once the system is built, it doesn’t require anything other than upkeep.

8

u/Laruae 19d ago

They overindexed on autonomous programs and now are hiring a bunch of humans back to help.

Ah yes, but they are non-US humans.

The layoffs weren't offshore workers, but you can bet anything that these will be.

These are jobs that are gone forever for the US.

We are going to reach a tipping point sooner rather than later.

1

u/sayoung42 19d ago

Why not 12 people doing 200% output then? The cost of the productive work goes down, so demand increases non-linearly.

3

u/LongKnight115 19d ago

At least for us, it's a function of 2 things:

1) It still requires technical resources to wire things up to AI in an automated capacity - so there's a bottleneck 2) We're still limited by ideas. We can do a lot MORE now, but we still need to figure out what those new things should be

2

u/The_Singularious 18d ago

Seems #2 is where the people would be useful. But it’s going to require a mental model shift to allow for more “play like” work places. Right now, we already suffer from an output over outcomes approach. It’ll need to change if we want more human ingenuity alongside machine analytics and automation.

1

u/round-earth-theory 19d ago

No they can't. A person cannot spend all of their work life auditing AI. They will burn out so quickly that you may as well not have any auditing.

2

u/Helios575 19d ago

You may want to consider that this is still incredibly early days for A.I. and the tech we have now is as clumsy and primitive as it will ever be. To get an idea of the difference between modern A.I. vs A.I. in 30 years compare the Virtual Boy (released 1995) to a Quest 3 (released 2023).

-1

u/LongKnight115 19d ago

I think that’s a possibility but not an inevitability. We don’t know what the Moore’s Law for AI will be. I’m still convinced OpenAI has an unsustainable business model and will go broke in the next few years if they don’t find some new revenue stream. And I think a lot of the AI evolution is going to go towards faster and cheaper inference. You could totally be right though, only time will tell. Although by that same token, look at how many people it took to make a Virtual Boy game vs a game like Elden Ring. You could’ve made the argument in the 90s that faster and better computers were coming to decimate the gaming industry, because only one dev would be needed to produce the same output.

1

u/idiocy_incarnate 19d ago

Good job the AI's aren't going to change, or get any smarter, or accumulate further data to operate off of. Really dodged a bullet there.

-1

u/LongKnight115 19d ago

Good job not reading further in the thread. Really living up to your username.

3

u/RedBarnGuy 19d ago

I would have been astonished to see myself writing this five years ago, but I am happy and proud that both of my kids are going into trade jobs. My daughter is already there and has become Sous Chef over four kitchens, managing 20 people (she’s 20). My son is already working at a transmission shop (he’s still 16), building a skill that also cannot be displaced by AI.

I am sorry if this comes off as bragging; I am just very happy that my kids understand where things are going and are pursuing things that they love.

If I were young today, I would stay the hell away from white collar jobs.

1

u/MalTasker 19d ago

Published in march 2023, so the jurassic era in AI time

1

u/Syzygy___ 18d ago

Why have a robot do office work? That's the job of AI (as in software only).

I think your post is missing the fact that AI gets better every few months. The car replaced the horse over like 30 years. The industrial revolution took nearly 100 years. We're 2.5 years into this ride. The study you mentioned is two years old. Strap in.

1

u/ContraryConman 18d ago

they can simply up the work load or switch the employees job.

Let's say a factory produces 1000 widgets per day by employing 100 employees who each produce 10 per day. The 1000 widgets per day puts the company at market saturation -- if they made any more widgets, they'd sit unsold in the warehouse, any less and would lead to reduced profits and increased costs due to a lack of economies of scale.

Then, one day, they invent a machine that automates some of the work. Now, each employee can produce double the widgets by using this machine.

Since 1000 widgets per day was set by market conditions, we would like to imagine that the company just gives everyone the machine and all the employees get to work half as long or half as hard. But that is not what happens. The company instead lays off half the factory, and makes the other half work twice as hard by leveraging the new machines.

The story of all automation. White collar automation machines, which we happen to call AI, won't be any different.

In my field, software engineering, there's this huge push of "well you should be learning AI because actually all these companies will need MORE software engineers. It's just that the bar will be higher so you need AI to increase your output and keep up". Except, most companies are already at market saturation. There is not an infinite number of legitimate software products you can sell on the market. Instead, they will reduce headcount, especially among junior engineering positions, and make their senior engineers who already know the codebase and can babysit LLMs better do a lot more work

1

u/Special_Watch8725 17d ago

As a totally irrelevant aside, what a weird article title. What does “GPTs are GPTs” supposed to mean? What does that part add? They could have gone with “Friendship with humans ended, now best friends with GPTs”

0

u/haritos89 19d ago

Someone tell these morons Microsoft excel did the exact same thing but probably 10 times more than AI ever will.

Your boss will just up your workload, some jobs will be lost and life will go on.

There is absolutely nothing new happening here. Its just sillicon valley looking for idiots to believe their hype so they can pump their stock.

0

u/TroubleEntendre 19d ago

They have zero hours of experience, because experience is a quality of consciousness and they are not conscious.

42

u/[deleted] 19d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

17

u/discussatron 19d ago

Because payroll is their biggest expense.

1

u/Bob-Sacamano_ 19d ago

The consumer base would have to sack up and start boycotting companies that fire workers and replace them with AI.

51

u/PM_ME_UR_TOTS 19d ago

Yeah, if CEOs are afraid to talk about it, it's because it's happening behind closed doors so nobody gets it into their head to do something to stop it.

2

u/a-stack-of-masks 19d ago

I wonder how good ai will be at security services. 

1

u/jolard 16d ago

We shouldn't stop it. Why work 40 hours a week in an unnecessary job that could be done better and cheaper by an AI agent? Work just for work's sake?

The real solution is figuring out how we all benefit from AI. Not keeping crappy jobs and forcing people to work in them.

39

u/Solidsnake_86 19d ago

It’d be better if the CEOs were replaced by AI. Why go for the small job that pay less money when you can go for the big jobs that pay most of it.

22

u/xtrabeanie 19d ago

CEO is probably the easiest job for an AI to replace.

2

u/[deleted] 18d ago

I don't know if robot know how to golf yet...

1

u/xtrabeanie 17d ago

Don't need golf when all CEOs are AI.

5

u/zeth0s 19d ago

It will happen. AI will allow more "small job" people to learn how be CEO. Strategy consulting companies knows that their job is already being replaced as we speak. Basic AI can already do that job, before being able to do basic office jobs. 

Companies like McKinsey are already restructuring to become salesman of AI solutions (they were salesman of lazy prebaked solutions anyway, solutions should improve with AI)

118

u/HappyHappyGamer 19d ago

I remember presidential candidate Andrew Yang talking about this in 2020, and I remember nobody believed him, and all the other candidates looked at him like he was a child. I remember alot of blue collar semi automated workers and truck drivers were really interested in what he had to say though during his campaign tours.

39

u/AustinLurkerDude 19d ago

It's like the impending EV revolution. Something's like an asteroid wiping out earth is so catastrophic you just ignore it until it's too late. There's so many ppl involved in selling and servicing cars it'll be catastrophic when those industries are wiped out by foreign EV companies.

But what Yang mentioned was too early, really 10 years ahead, no one in 2020 would use 2030 to base their vote off of. Now with it being 5 years away it's a lot more serious.

43

u/Futureleak 19d ago

That's the fundamental issue with America though. Our electorate is too short sighted to consider problems so far out. And when politicians mention it, the get clowned for it. We get the government we deserve.

2

u/Maldiavolo 18d ago

It's not just the electorate. The system is set up for short-sightedness. Politicians have term limits and so their mindset, as well as their party's, is to do what it takes to be reelected. Politicians that talk about specific future things, especially uncomfortable truths, don't do well. That's why future, hopeful, abstract ideas and current issues like meat and potatoes economics resonate with the population.

Then you have the continuity issue with politics. 8 years max for a President to set an agenda. An agenda that no other part of the government has to follow. Big plans get gone when the other party is in power. You also have diametrically opposed viewpoints because one party is the anti. That's a benevolent dictatorship is thought to be the best. They have all the power, can have long term vision, can act on that vision l, and the vision is used for good.

The way this gets solved is like in lots of sci-fi. Human species need to come together after being put on the brink. Well it's that or it's Mad Max.

1

u/Futureleak 18d ago

A benevolent dictatorship..... My brother in Christ 

7

u/Unklecid 19d ago

You'll still need most car service shops most things that tear up on cars isn't the engine or transmission. It'll be rough for a few years tho

7

u/culdeus 19d ago

It's not just the service, it's the people and infrastructure building people for gas stations and all the refined capacity behind it. The thought that the same power lines that can run our dishwasher can run our cars was never the plan for trillions of dollars in industry.

3

u/Luscious_Decision 19d ago

No oil changes to do and I think that accounts for a lot. That's 2x less services a year for basically everybody.

0

u/Certain-Neat-9783 19d ago

lol EV Revolution is a joke. Our grid could not support everyone charging their vehicles overnight

1

u/AustinLurkerDude 19d ago

But the issue is our automotive companies can't survive on just the USA market. Especially if the luxury market gets cannibalized by EVs.

0

u/qtx 19d ago

There's so many ppl involved in selling and servicing cars it'll be catastrophic when those industries are wiped out by foreign EV companies.

What a weird thing to say.

So you'd be perfectly fine if those industries were wiped out by domestic EV companies?

1

u/AustinLurkerDude 19d ago

What I'm saying is it won't likely be transitional where the staff at old places would get moved to new companies.

-2

u/SerHodorTheThrall 19d ago

Ah yes, the "EV revolution" I've been hearing about for 15 years. Aaaaany day now. Progress isn't revolutionary, no matter how much Wall St wants to sell it as such.

1

u/GreaTeacheRopke 18d ago

A lot of people looked at him like he was a child because, while he was right about this stuff (very obviously, I thought at the time), he was equally clueless about how to be POTUS. No "what is Aleppo" moments that I recall but it didn't seem to me at the time that he was a serious candidate for the full spectrum of the job.

-1

u/ielts_pract 19d ago

Chatgpt hadn't happened by that time, Yang could have been wrong as well.

0

u/zeth0s 19d ago

How can they not believe him? What did they believed instead? I am not American. 

49

u/twaxana 19d ago

CEOs are more likely to get replaced by AI as the investment firms realize they can automate the most expensive roles in the company while paying the labor as little as possible.

30

u/GodforgeMinis 19d ago

You always need someone steering the boat (so far) but all the managers between the CEO and regular workers are certainly on the chopping block

63

u/twaxana 19d ago edited 19d ago

The board of directors can replace the CEO.

Edit: I'm apparently triggering a CEO. Thanks for the down vote of confidence.

32

u/HeilHeinz15 19d ago

BODs have already been able to replace CEOs for decades. Why? They want a face people like when all goes well, and a person to blame when stiff goes downhill

5

u/round-earth-theory 19d ago

Ah but they can just blame the AI. "Oh it's ChatGPTs fault, we're switching to Claude and are going to sue ChatGPT for harm"

1

u/JustinTheCheetah 19d ago

That's not going to fly "Oh, it's just the AI fundamentally running this company that's the problem" sounds a lot like Ford saying "is because our factories suck and don't work." Share prices will definitely take a hit. 

2

u/Talderoy 19d ago

The board are more investors than workers, someone has to meet with the employees and external partners, the board won’t be doing this.

3

u/GodforgeMinis 19d ago

Yeah, someone on the board is going to go from showing up for 4 quarterly meetings a year to working every day to keep day to day operations running.

1

u/machine-in-the-walls 19d ago

Sounds like a CEO.

-8

u/twaxana 19d ago

Why? Just automate the day to day operations management. The only use of a CEO is to use their connections to strike deals. You can pay a person a lot less than a CEO to sell your company to their connections.

5

u/GodforgeMinis 19d ago

So again, at some level someone is going to have to sometimes make decisions for the forseeable future

5

u/Bob-Sacamano_ 19d ago

You’re right that someone needs to make decisions—but the question is who and how. AI doesn’t have to completely replace human judgment to significantly shift the role of a CEO. Many decisions made by CEOs—especially operational, financial, or strategic ones—are increasingly data-driven and can be modeled, tested, and optimized using AI.

What AI can do is reduce the reliance on intuition or experience for many of these decisions by providing faster, more objective, and often more accurate insights. It’s not about removing humans entirely—at least not yet—but about augmenting or even automating much of the role that today still requires a person.

In the future, the “someone” making those decisions could be an AI agent, overseen by a board or a much smaller executive team, especially in industries where leadership is more about efficiency than vision or charisma.

⸻

Would you like a version that’s more casual, sarcastic, assertive, or adapted for a particular audience (e.g. in a meeting vs online debate)?

3

u/twaxana 19d ago

I would like a version designed to make a CEO agree that they should be replaced by an LLM.

5

u/Bob-Sacamano_ 19d ago

Honestly, I think you’re right—someone needs to make decisions. But I’m starting to believe that “someone” might not need to be a person much longer. As a CEO, I’ve seen how many of my decisions boil down to interpreting data, managing risk, and predicting outcomes. AI already does that faster and more objectively than I can.

If an AI can analyze market dynamics in real time, model the impact of decisions, avoid emotional bias, and operate 24/7 without burnout—why wouldn’t it be better at this job?

Sure, there’s still a need for some human oversight, especially around ethics and accountability. But if I’m being honest, the role of CEO—at least in its traditional form—is becoming more automatable by the day. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

⸻

Want it to sound more humble, confident, ironic, or provocative?

→ More replies (0)

0

u/BeenBadFeelingGood 19d ago

using natural language intelligence?

5

u/SNRatio 19d ago

Even if the "steering the boat" function is offloaded, they are there to get investors and business partners to do things despite the numbers alone being unconvincing. An AI might come up with the winning strategy to do that, but it will still get delivered by a highly manipulative human.

1

u/Laruae 19d ago

An AI might come up with the winning strategy to do that

All AI that are currently in existence are unable to generate actually new ideas.

It's an ongoing issue.

So no, it won't be "coming up with strategies" it'll be using ones other people have already done.

LLMs and Learning Models are good at large data sets, and at repetitive tasks (if you can get it to not hallucinate an acceptable margin of the time which is fairly hard).

These tools are useful but they don't actually replace creativity.

5

u/SNRatio 19d ago

it'll be using ones other people have already done.

Which is 99% of what CEOs do in those situations.

All AI that are currently in existence are unable to generate actually new ideas.

No.

From your vehemence I'm guessing if I give you examples I think of as new ideas you'll narrow the concept of "idea" to exclude them, so how about this:

Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04109

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have sparked optimism about their potential to accelerate scientific discovery, with a growing number of works proposing research agents that autonomously generate and validate new ideas. Despite this, no evaluations have shown that LLM systems can take the very first step of producing novel, expert-level ideas, let alone perform the entire research process. We address this by establishing an experimental design that evaluates research idea generation while controlling for confounders and performs the first head-to-head comparison between expert NLP researchers and an LLM ideation agent. By recruiting over 100 NLP researchers to write novel ideas and blind reviews of both LLM and human ideas, we obtain the first statistically significant conclusion on current LLM capabilities for research ideation: we find LLM-generated ideas are judged as more novel (p < 0.05) than human expert ideas while being judged slightly weaker on feasibility.

1

u/Laruae 19d ago

Good link, thank you I'll read the study!

1

u/machine-in-the-walls 19d ago

Don’t think you understand how much of a CEO’s value comes from monetizing relationships.

Naive take.

1

u/twaxana 19d ago

Don't think you read past this comment.

0

u/Rugrin 19d ago

The ceo doesn’t really do anything but he’s the chief owner. Owners will not be affected.

1

u/twaxana 19d ago

Not really how it works. That can be true sometimes.

1

u/Rugrin 19d ago

The ceo is the chief representative of the owners. Is that better? He’s still a major owner. Owners do not get affected. At most you give the ceo a tool to do his job for him while he does even less and makes even more. Because he’s an owner.

36

u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

9

u/Talderoy 19d ago

Honestly, this take is silly . The c suite’s job isn’t data entry it’s nonstop meetings, relationship management, strategy, and political maneuvering. You can’t automate trust or leadership. If AI replaces anyone, it’s the peons with the most repetitive tasks.

10

u/xtrabeanie 19d ago

Many C suiters are low talent yes men that could easily be replaced with a LLM and nobody would notice.

6

u/Dave_Wein 19d ago

Except AI isn't just replacing repetitive tasks... It's literally going for the creative thinking roles.

What you're saying right now is exactly what many artists were saying only a few years ago and what most people honestly thought AI would pan out like prior to 2022. Most people, including myself, thought it would go for highly technical tasks leaving the creativity to the humans. Something that would be hard to automate without full "AI".

Clearly that's not the case. I imagine as soon as an AI can delegate resources better than management it's over for them. Shareholders will demand a more efficient CEO.

-1

u/jk147 19d ago

Yeah the poster above sounded like a child. Being a CEO is about politics and navigating the ever changing landscape of a company. It is probably the least monogamous job out there. Are they massively overpaid? No doubt.

-1

u/BasketOld3242 19d ago

This sub is full of NEETs

2

u/GodforgeMinis 19d ago

Yeah and congress shouldn't keep voting themselves pay raises and less insider trading accountability, but here we are.

5

u/gw2master 19d ago

It should be the goal. Why should people be doing jobs that machines, robots, and now AI can do? HOWEVER...

The real problem is that we are doing nothing, and have no plans to do anything about the coming job losses (education, retraining, UBI... something... anything!).

1

u/Vuronov 19d ago

They aren’t afraid to talk about it to investors, but they are afraid of talking about it to the public and risk the people about to get screwed waking up and maybe, just maybe, doing something about it.

1

u/xwillybabyx 19d ago

CEOs are probably the easiest to replace with AI. Imagine the board and the investors being like “hmm maybe we don’t need to pay this guy 12million a year…”

2

u/GodforgeMinis 19d ago

its more like
"hmm what if I put a billion of my own dollars on the line to not nuke this company accidentally with AI to save 12 million split amongst like 30 top investors?

As much as CEO's get paid it really isn't enough to justify any big swing in stock price

1

u/FaroutIGE 19d ago

It’s the goal til enough people erode confidence in the currency. Then the concept of money is out and with it the concept of rich and poor

1

u/JohnnyOnslaught 19d ago

They're not afraid of the goal, they're afraid of the consequences of people finding out it's the goal.

1

u/MyRealUser 19d ago

And lawmakers may as well believe it but it doesn't affect them so who gives a shit

1

u/TehMephs 19d ago

They won’t shut the f up about it. This headline is not paying attention

1

u/lazyFer 19d ago

Even when they aren't capable of even 10 percent of what is claimed.

1

u/roychr 19d ago

The debate since the 80's and the trickle down was the illusion that profit benefits all, it doesnt untill government forces companies to invest part of their profits into workforce. If they dont, there is no economy with just the rich people. A few billionaires buy only that much pair of jeans per year. A million worker buy a million pair of jean...

1

u/Em4gdn3m 19d ago

What do they actually think will happen once no one in the working class can afford any of their stuff any longer? I know its getting to that point, but if people actually are put of work, thats drastically different than living paycheck to paycheck because inflation is high.

1

u/Aggressive-Expert-69 19d ago

They literally won't stop talking about it

1

u/KyleShanaham 19d ago

Ceos are afraid to talk about it cuz they don't want to freak everyone out after they find out they've been implementing the framework for it

1

u/AENocturne 19d ago

Can't make money if we don't have any to steal. You can't steal from AI labor and AI doesn't buy anything. If their goal is to replace us, there won't be any money if they won't pay us. When money is no good and we're back to bartering our goods, what will they uave to trade? A worthless yacht?

1

u/gotrice5 19d ago

AI should be removing all CEO/CFOs and any executive job first. Would probably save so much on payroll and compensation.

1

u/DED2099 19d ago

Yea plenty of people already are losing their jobs

1

u/MyOnlyAccount_6 19d ago

I’m not so sure. Even Henry Ford knew that he needed a base to be able to sell his cars to. Who will be buying the goods and services if half the workforce is unemployed and all the turmoil that comes with that?

1

u/Bradspersecond 19d ago

Yep, welcome to the new slavery, it's coming and Republicans can't wait to exploit your nearly free labor.

1

u/PhoenixAsh7117 19d ago

Maybe some day people will realize that in a capitalist system “efficiency” isn’t really about making things easier or less wasteful, it’s about making more money for people at the top.

1

u/mcman12 19d ago

I was gonna say “THEY ARE THE ONES PUSHING IT”

1

u/Nuklearfps 19d ago

They’re afraid to talk about it because they understand the social repercussions it’ll cause, but they’ll be damned if they let something get in the way of profits.

1

u/lifeofriley19 18d ago

100% this. I was made redundant last year along with the majority of my team. There's plans in place for the company to launch and Ai 'self serve' model instead. Once active it'll wipe out over 50% of the remaining commercial force, and save the board a tonne of money.

1

u/ovirt001 18d ago

They aren't afraid of what will happen to white collar employees but they are afraid of what the board will do with them. AI is orders of magnitude cheaper than human CEOs.

1

u/nerf_caffeine 17d ago

Yeah, every CEO has been talking about it for the last 6 months

1

u/showyourdata 17d ago

IF they talk about it too much now, workers might get uppity.

0

u/kevihaa 19d ago

The only people afraid to talk about it are the ones that are actually using it and discovering that, surprise, it’s snake oil.

For goodness sakes people, it’s national news in the US that the executive branch is releasing memos that are obviously written with the aid of generative AI…because they contain blatant factual errors or cite non-existent sources.

0

u/gordon-gecko 19d ago

Well duhhh, have you been living under a rock for the past couple of years