Technology CEOs believe that artificial intelligence will allow them to be everywhere at once

Silicon Valley moguls They’ve recently complained that a lot of people are Very negative About artificial intelligence. They are also frustrated by The adoption of artificial intelligence has stalled Among the major companies that do not see the profitable efficiencies promised by the big technology companies.

But if consumers and companies have proven resistant to the acceleration of artificial intelligence, that has not stopped billionaire CEOs from pressing ahead with their personal fantasies about what the technology can do.

On April 13, Financial Times I mentioned Meta is working on creating a realistic 3D avatar for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to multiple people at the company. The bot has been trained on its public comments, behaviors, and up-to-the-minute views on company strategy, and is designed to interact with Meta employees on Zuckerberg’s behalf. Employees are supposed to be able to video chat with the avatar, which can answer questions and provide management guidance and feedback.

Zuckerberg is personally involved in testing and training his animated double, Meta employees told the Financial Times, noting that this early-stage project has become a priority amid the development of many other artificial intelligence characters that Facebook and Instagram users will be able to interact with individually.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment on Zuckerbot. But such a concept represents a predictable extension of what other tech leaders have already done. A year ago, Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Eric Yuan, CEOs of both Klarna and Zoom, turned heads with their recruitment. Dual artificial intelligence To deliver a portion of their feedback on quarterly earnings calls. The presentations indicated that company leaders are thinking about what kind of routine responsibilities they can delegate to their role models.

Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block (formerly Square), oversaw. Rolling layoffs The financial services company is more inclined towards artificial intelligence. In February, he announced a workforce reduction of nearly 40% 4000 employees They lost their jobs. Then, in interview For Business Podcast A long strange journey This month he revealed his vision of how management hierarchies will gradually collapse thanks to the centralized AI that Block is now building on.

“I would say the most depth we have right now is probably five people between me and anyone in the company,” Dorsey said. “I want to get that down to two or three this year. Ideally, there’s no layer, everyone in the company reports to me, and that would be all 6,000 employees of the company. That seems a bit silly when you think about the old structure. But when you consider that the majority of our work goes through that intelligence layer, it becomes a lot more manageable.”

On the face of it, Dorsey’s proposal sounds radically different from outsourcing CEO duties at a digital company. However, the idea yields a similar result for employees: instant, AI-mediated “access” to your ultimate boss, and the illusion that he or she directly supervises all employees and controls every part of the company. This trend suggests that although platforms face hurdles in imposing AI features on users, senior leaders are determined to exert greater influence within their businesses through some kind of AI-powered omnipresence.

In response to a request for comment on Dorsey’s remarks, a Block spokesperson provided a link to a March 31 blog post that Dorsey co-authored with Sequoia partner Roelof Botha, titled “From hierarchy to intelligenceThe article makes the case for eliminating middle management by rethinking how AI is integrated into workflows.

“Most companies using AI today give everyone a co-pilot, making the current structure work a little better without changing it,” the pair wrote. “We’re after something different: a company built to serve as intelligence (or miniature AGI).” Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is a not-yet-existent type of logical AI that matches or exceeds human capabilities.