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So the typical Tech CEO. What's new?
Not only have I (25 year programming vet) never had a CEO who could code, I've never had a CEO who thought he should be able to code. As a species, they tend to be proud of their leadership chops rather than their ability to actually do anything.
Mine can, but then again, it's a <50 employee consultancy. Mostly he still does sales and is a project lead for some customers though, he only really writes code when there are no engineers available and one of his customers needs something quickly.
No C-Suite suit I’ve ever met in my life has struck me as a leader type. I know there’s some out there but they all think that being in charge makes them leaders.
Yeah, I should have put "leadership" in ironic quotes. Like they say: don't step in the leadership.
CEOs are required to be skilled manipulators. That's literally what their job is, actually.
So AI could do their job 10x better?
Unironically yes.
90% of what CEOs do is talk to other CEOs and other C Suite members. Very rarely are they actually subject matter experts, those days are long gone. Externally, they are mascots, internally, they read reports from their underlings and then 'make the final call'.
You may notice that these are things that LLMs actually do a somewhat decent job of, ingesting a wide variety of input info, and essentially transforming it into a compelling narrative.
This is why so many CEOs and C suite are so enamored with, and impressed by 'AI':
Its a better version of what they do, which is essentially professional gaslighting.
C suite tend to be sociopathic narcissists.
This is just literally a verified and studied fact.
So, the sociopathic narcissists are impressed by an automagic gaslighting machine, that is often actually more factually corrrect than they are... but of course the actual facts don't matter to a narcissist, what matters is accomplishing their will.
This is a big part of why they genuienly do not understand why everyone else doesn't 'appreciate' AI the way they do.
They're out of touch, delusional, by way of narcissism.
For shits and giggles, I asked Le Chat to make the case for replacing a tech CEO with AI and, uh, the answer was very much cynical CEO-speak already.
Prompt:
Let's say I'm on the board of a multi-billion dollar tech company, hypothetically. Make a case for replacing the CEO with AI.
Slopmachine/Future tech CEO response:
spoiler
Here’s a provocative, boardroom-ready case for replacing a human CEO with AI—framed as a strategic imperative for a multi-billion dollar tech company:
1. Unmatched Data-Driven Decision Making
AI’s Edge: AI processes terabytes of real-time data—market trends, internal metrics, competitor moves—without cognitive bias or fatigue. It identifies patterns and opportunities invisible to humans, enabling decisions optimized for long-term value, not short-term politics or ego.
Human Limitation: Even the best CEOs rely on intuition, limited information, and personal networks. Bias, fatigue, and emotional factors can distort judgment.
2. 24/7/365 Execution and Scalability
AI’s Edge: AI never sleeps. It can monitor global operations, respond to crises, and execute strategy across time zones without delay. It scales decision-making to thousands of variables simultaneously—something no human or team can match.
Human Limitation: CEOs are constrained by time, attention, and physical capacity. Burnout and succession risks are real.
3. Cost Efficiency and Risk Mitigation
AI’s Edge: No golden parachutes, no compensation packages, no PR scandals. AI’s “salary” is a fraction of a CEO’s, with zero risk of embezzlement, harassment, or reputational damage. It can also simulate outcomes, reducing strategic risk.
Human Limitation: CEO turnover is expensive. The average Fortune 500 CEO tenure is ~5 years, with severance and transition costs often exceeding $100M.
4. Alignment with Shareholder Primacy
AI’s Edge: AI can be programmed to prioritize shareholder value above all else—no personal agendas, no legacy-building, no vanity projects. Every decision is auditable, transparent, and aligned with pre-set KPIs.
Human Limitation: CEOs may prioritize personal legacy, pet projects, or short-term stock bumps over sustainable growth.
5. Adaptive Learning and Continuous Improvement
AI’s Edge: AI evolves with the company. It learns from every decision, every market shift, and every internal data point, constantly refining its models. It can A/B test strategies in simulation before real-world deployment.
Human Limitation: CEOs plateau. Their playbooks become outdated; their networks stagnate.
Counterarguments (and Rebuttals)
- “AI lacks emotional intelligence.” Rebuttal: Emotional intelligence is overrated in strategy. AI can analyze sentiment data and optimize communication—without the volatility of human emotions.
- “AI can’t inspire culture.” Rebuttal: Culture is built by systems and incentives, not charisma. AI can design and enforce culture-aligned processes at scale.
- “Regulators won’t allow it.” Rebuttal: Regulators adapt. The first company to prove AI leadership will set the standard.
Implementation Roadmap
- Pilot: Deploy AI as “Co-CEO” for 12 months, with the human CEO as a check/balance.
- Audit: Compare AI vs. human decisions on ROI, risk, and innovation.
- Transition: Phase out the human role as trust in AI grows.
Final Pitch: The future belongs to companies that remove human bottlenecks. AI leadership isn’t just an upgrade—it’s the ultimate competitive moat.
Question for the board: If our competitors replace their CEOs with AI before we do, what’s our response?
The competition food for thought at the end is chef's kiss!
That's what ppl keep saying. Effectively they are overpaid mascot.
they are the patsies for the board of the directors usually they have the power,and act as lightning rods, its a plus if they use woman to take the flack (aka glass cliff)
Huh, did not know that term. But yes, that's what I've been saying all the time. The CEO is a highly paid fall guy so when the company commits a crime, the CEO can be fired and the company can keep on doing whatever it does. Similarly, if the stock value tanks, the CEO goes bye-bye so investors can be led to believe that things will turn around now.
Of course the Trump admin is so corpo-friendly, there's been no need to fire a CEO for corporate wrongdoing. Because at this point you can do anything and nothing would happen anyway.
one mysogynistic example is the glass cliff, where woman are put in the ceo positions when a company is facing legal and PR backlash, to take the fall, while the BOD and the other c-suites get away scotfree.
21 years later, here I am learning the term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
The glass cliff is a phenomenon described by psychologists Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam, in which women are more likely to break the "glass ceiling" (i.e. achieve leadership roles in business and government) during periods of crisis or downturn when the risk of failure is highest. Other research has expanded the definition of the glass cliff phenomenon to include racial and ethnic minority groups.
one recent example is musk hiding behind a woman ceo, when he went full nazi.
in idiocracy the AI replaced any and all bosses int he future, that includes ceos.
hes basically the version of Musk for AI/coding. plus the trifecta of scammers came from the same place, paypal, thiel and musk, and altman and thiel's gay pool parties.
That doesn't surprise me. The guy is and always has been a grifter.
I'm more asking what lineage he was birthed from to be in the exact right place to screw over tech development for everyone
Why do people think that the CEO is like the "best employee" at what the company does?? No CEO at any company I've ever worked at has had a basic understanding of the work that I did. They understand "the business" but aren't the ones doing implementation.
And that's "fine" - we have different jobs. Theirs, apparently, has been worth millions of times what I do though...
I have a CEO that I respect. I'm in an engineering heavy company and the CEO is anything but that, and he knows it. His background is finance and that's most of his job, and interfacing with government. He delegates effectively and does not insert himself in technical decisions. The one thing he does do is ask a lot of questions. In some respect he doesn't care what the answer is, but he wants to know that we've considered all the angles before he takes our advice. I've been pulled in to a boardroom before because something was on his mind that he wanted to share. One occasion he told me to think about it. He didn't want me to follow up with him, but when it came up at a board meeting he wanted the COO to have an answer, so he was flagging the issue for me. Good guy.
This is what a CEO is supposed to do. They are the glue between every department and are supposed to make sure that everyone is on the same page. They ask "what is needed for us to get to this point and how can I help". They leave all functional details to the subject matter experts. They act as guide rails and do not derail the train.
Good CEOs understand that they are worth less than their employees because without their expertise and domain knowledge the CEO has no product to sell.
It's not surprising.
There are brain damaged people out there who still think Elon Musk is a good engineer.
It's not unusual for founders in highly technical fields to have a good level of expertise in that field. Not mandatory but if you look at Alexandr Wang (scale AI, former engineer), Dario Amodei (Anthropic, AI researcher), Michael Truell (Cursor, computer scientist and International Olympiad in Informatics medalist) the expectation is not unreasonable.
The sales people generally take over later.
At my old company of about 20,000 employees, our CEO used to travel between our regions to give speeches at our work gatherings. So we'd have to listen to him talk every year or so.
I was constantly amazed listening to the bullshit this guy would spew. He literally founded the company and led it for 20 years - but I firmly believe he had absolutely no idea what it was that we actually did.
We were an IT and management consulting company, so we'd be doing stuff like building applications, systems integrations, change management, or managing programs. The usually consulting shit.
This dude would give these speeches like we were out there solving world hunger.
AI guy is bad at coding
surprisedPikachu.jpg
This guys a fucking psycho for real. Another robot man with too much money for his own good, or anyone’s good, really.
The sub header for this paper is hilarious.
"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer."
HAHAHAHA, no shit, he may just as well end up in a new league all his own with how much money will burn once this goes belly up.
Altman is just another tech bro dropout who never completed anything, similar to Musk.
But the skills required to be a CEO are that of a skilled manipulator, why would a CEO waste time coding when he can hire meatbags to do that? The nature of US startups benefits con artists and bullshit artists, because the VC money community is not the STEM community.
OMD! I could be rich!
Anyone can be rich if born to the right parents.
Having been in Tech in the last Tech Boom and also in this later one (I was even in Startups some years ago), I can tell you that whilst the previous one was mainly driven by Techies wanting do cool things, this one is entirely driven by grifters with backgrounds in areas like Finance and Marketing.
The present generation of Startup Founders are almost never Technically skilled, rather they're skilled at Salesmanship (most notably, Pitching) and they don't dream of cracking some complex problem, they dream about making a lot of money via an Exit Strategy.
The only surprising thing about Altman not understanding Technology in depth is people being surprised by it.
this one is entirely driven by grifters with backgrounds in areas like Finance and Marketing
I worked for startups in the '90s and this describes all of them, too.
Your interesting use of Capitalization is odd.
It’s Trumptastic!
Least surprising thing I've read about him
Why is this framed as if it's in any way surprising?
has carved out an image for himself as one of the preeminent AI whisperers of our age
Has he? The only things I ever read about him are that he's a dunce with too much money at his disposal.
a shortage of expertise that becomes obvious when the CEO mixes up basic AI terms.
Is that why he thinks the acronym "GPT" is a trademark that belongs to his company, even though it existed before they did?
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Elon 2.0
Elon presents himself as an elite coder and tech savant, and it sounds like his teams have to work around his hubris to prevent him from damaging things. I don’t know how Altman presents himself. More important to understand what your role is. His seems to be manipulating Trump, raising money, and evangelizing AI.
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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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