NEW YORK—Expressing confidence that the new technology wasn’t a threat, FinCorp Solutions CEO Charles Markham reportedly expressed relief Wednesday that artificial intelligence could never replace him if he already contributed nothing to the company. “I actually don’t do anything, so there’s nothing the computer can…
That may work for long established companies that want to just maintain their status quo, but that wouldn’t work at all for startups or companies looking to grow (real growth, not just profit growth). AI is terrible at the kind of abstract and strategic thinking required at the top level when companies are in that phase.
I understand completely. My main concern however is not startup companies. I’m all for supporting smaller companies. It’s more like huge corporations where the CEO takes the majority of the money and probably spends more time on vacation than actually doing anything. Even though I’m sure they do more than I am letting on, I don’t think it justifies millions or even billions of dollars in pay and bonuses. If they started the company that’s one thing. However most CEO’s of large corporations are so far removed from the initial founding of the company they basically have less to do with what the company does than the average employee. The amount of money these companies could make if they actually put that money back into it is potentially higher than current profits. It’s really a win-win situation for everyone except for the CEO instead of just a win for the CEO and nobody else.
The math for those large cooperations is a bit more complex than that. CEO compensation is often mostly stock options, which has a value for tax purposes, but is not a value that can be easily reinvested into the company. The actual cash salary portion of the compensation package is usually peanuts compared to company revenue.
They’re basically trading the CEO partial ownership of the company in exchange for running it, and I’m not sure how you would go about forcing any kind of change on that, without unintentionally breaking things for smaller companies and startups.