Could AI Replace CEOs?

AI isn’t likely to replace chief executive officers (CEOs), but its rapid adoption will likely change how CEOs do their jobs. 

According to an edX survey, 49 percent of CEOs believe that AI could automate most or all of their responsibilities [1]. However, certain workplace skills required of a good CEO are beyond even the most sophisticated AI’s capability altogether. AI can’t replicate skills such as: 

• Critical thinking

• Creativity

• Collaboration

• Active listening

• Inspiring others

Fortunately, AI’s role in business is not to replace CEOs. Learn more about how CEOs can leverage AI to help improve business performance. 

Understanding AI’s role in business

A CEO is the head of a company. CEOs are responsible for major business decisions, overall operational management, and liaising between their company’s board of directors and other relevant stakeholders. 

CEOs exist in every type of business—and many businesses in a variety of industries and sectors use AI. You’ll find AI used frequently in: 

• Information

• Tech

• Education

• Real estate

• Management

AI use is also increasingly common in the financial, health care, and administrative fields. Regardless of the field in question, AI can help CEOs (and other workers) reduce time spent on mundane tasks such as data analysis, report development, and communicating the same information separately to a variety of stakeholders. In a general sense, AI has the potential to boost efficiency and productivity—and, therefore, return on investment (ROI). 

Capabilities of AI

Your business can benefit from AI adoption. AI possesses certain capabilities that improve company efficiency, productivity, and profitability—all core concerns of CEOs. 

Data analysis and decision-making

AI can automate data analysis tasks. Furthermore, it tends to be faster and more accurate than human data analysts. Data analysis-related tasks AI can automate include: 

• Writing code based on analysis parameters

• Collecting and displaying data summaries

• Summarizing complex data into intelligible portions

Because it’s capable of gathering so much data so quickly, AI can help CEOs make better-informed decisions. AI can’t strategize the way a human CEO can, but it can help give you the information you need to make the best possible decisions for your company, such as when it comes to performance evaluation and competitive analysis. 

Predictive analytics

CEOs have long utilized predictive analytics as a risk-mitigation technique. Predictive AI automates such tasks as identifying business patterns, predicting customer behavior, and developing ideas about the future landscape of your industry. By using AI to predict future outcomes, CEOs can more accurately avoid or at least mitigate unacceptable risks. 

Predictive AI can forecast a variety of data points important for decision-making, such as: 

• Customer churn

• Supply chain disruptions

• Practical operational failures

This can help you plan for certain negative business contingencies and allow you to proactively address issues that are more expensive to fix than to prevent ahead of time. 

Automated predictive analytics streamlines the process of discovering patterns amid a complex web of data points, such as sales figures and financial records. Additionally, AI gets better at predicting accurate business outcomes over time—and with cleaner, more accurate data sources. This allows CEOs to improve their opportunities for highly consequential data-driven decision-making. 

Limitations of AI

Implementing AI in your business may have downsides. As a CEO, it’s your job to weigh these against the benefits. 

Cost

AI can be costly to implement, especially for smaller businesses. The prohibitive cost comes from the acquisition of the necessary software and hardware, as well as the time and expertise required to train employees to use it. A CEO may find AI too costly to be worthwhile. 

It also takes time to work AI into your business workflow. Accommodating new AI technology can result in disruptions, at least initially. You’ll also have to keep abreast of new AI-centric regulations since noncompliance can result in heavy fines. Compliance, however, may also be costly: Complying with a new Bureau of Industry and Security notice could cost companies between $570,000 and $815,500 annually [2]. If a CEO determines this is too large an investment, they may end up avoiding adopting AI, at least for a while. 

Employee reluctance

Your plan to implement AI may raise concerns about potential job replacement among certain employees. While AI is unlikely to replace CEOs, it can replace employees whose jobs consist almost entirely of routine tasks. As a CEO, you’ll want to assuage their fears. In some cases, when you plan to bring AI on board, you may want to offer reskilling or upskilling opportunities for employees whose jobs it’s likely to affect. 

By developing and sticking to an AI-based business plan, you can work toward the responsible, helpful use of AI. Begin by defining your objectives regarding AI. Understand what it’s capable of and what it isn’t. Choose an AI platform that doesn’t have a sharp learning curve. And don’t be afraid to seek feedback from experts: CEOs make major business decisions, but they don’t have to do so alone. 

Ethical considerations

The general public remains skeptical about AI's impacts. For its part, the US Government Accountability Office remains concerned about AI’s potential effects on education, intellectual property, and privacy [3]. 

Their AI Accountability Framework outlines four principles CEOs can use when developing ethical AI guidelines [4]: 

Data

You will want to ensure the data your AI collects is reliable and representative. You’ll need to document the sources of training data—this is known as data transparency—and do what you can to eliminate inappropriate or inaccurate training data. 

Bias occurs because of the way programmers train AI. If they train an AI model on bias-laden data (that is, data characterized by factual inaccuracies or outright false information), that model may, from time to time, output biased answers to user queries. As AI adoption increases, bias could potentially result in real-world social and economic impacts. From a CEO standpoint, bias elimination is an intelligent aspect of risk management. 

Governance

Your AI governance statement—the processes you establish regarding how your business ethically operates and manages AI—promotes accountability. By demonstrating an overall business commitment to certain values, such as transparency, stakeholder inclusivity, and the kind of broad openness about your AI use that fosters public trust, CEOs prove to a skeptical public that they don’t consider themselves outside the repercussions of AI use. 

Monitoring

Your AI model should be reliable and continue to be relevant over time. To ensure this, you’ll want to continuously monitor its performance and fix issues as they arise. 

Part of a CEO’s job when it comes to AI is assessing its relevance. Ask yourself: is AI worthwhile in every use case? If not, it may be best to avoid using it in certain instances. You may find that, once you’ve established where it works best, you can scale AI use across your company, so long as you continue to monitor its performance. 

Performance

Be sure your AI model is performing in line with your business objectives. Define relevant metrics and make sure your AI system is helping employees meet them. 

You’ll want to document your methods as well—how you go about designing an AI model that does what you need it to do and how you make alterations to it as necessary. This means taking certain actions to, for instance, mitigate bias. Such actions may require regular human oversight of your AI system. 

AI’s impact on leadership: Could AI replace CEOs?

AI’s impact on leadership may be extensive—transformative, even—but the impact will come in the form of a hybrid approach rather than the outright replacement of human CEOs with AI. As a tool, AI can help CEOs with data-driven decision-making, but it has no real application for the emotional intelligence required of a good CEO.

Getting started in AI with Coursera

AI is unlikely to replace CEOs. It’s simply incapable of the kind of emotional intelligence and strategic vision that characterize successful CEOs. 

Learn more with Coursera. You can develop your facility with new AI technology via the University of Pennsylvania’s AI For Business Specialization course. Then, explore the University of Illinois’ Business Analytics Specialization course to learn how machine learning algorithms can help provide business insight.