CEOs Must Soldier On Even as AI Anxieties Loom
Top executives need to use AI to empower employees rather than replace or monitor them.
Illustrated icons of OpenAI's ChatGPT and others on a smartphone screen in Oslo on July 12, 2023.
Photographer: Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images
Chief executive officers keep getting new jobs piled onto their shoulders. The economic rise of China since the 1980s meant that they had to become Sinologists. The twin populist shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential ascension meant that they had to think about the capitalist system’s legitimacy. Now, with the next tech revolution at warp speed, they are having to become experts on artificial intelligence. It’s almost as if they’re underpaid.
During the China era, CEOs tried (at the very least) to master a few words of Mandarin. Today, they’re sprinkling AI-speak into their conversations: foundation models, large language models, hallucinations and the lot. And they’re desperately boning up on the latest books and obediently trooping to classes run by consultancies such as McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group. Gonzalo Gortázar, CEO of CaixaBank SA, sums up the mood in the C-suite: “Generative AI models surprise, impress and scare us, all at the same time.”