AI's Next Challenge: Take the CEO's Job

“The message out of big tech companies these days is that even the CEO's job is at risk with the rise of artificial intelligence.

 

We're accustomed to all of the talk about superintelligent AI vacuuming up office jobs and robots replacing workers on factory floors. But now the corner office appears to be in trouble, too.

 

"What a CEO does is maybe one of the easier things for an AI to do," Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet, told a reporter recently.

 

It can feel, at times, that big tech companies are just trying to one-up each other -- predicting all of the innumerable ways that AI will remake the world. And it turns out that an AI worker isn't cool. You know what's cool? An AI CEO is cool.

 

"Shame on me if OpenAI is not the first big company run by an AI CEO," Sam Altman, OpenAI chief executive, said at a conference a few weeks before Pichai's comments.

 

Altman was talking about how AI could soon be ready to basically run divisions within companies, if not the companies themselves. The real challenge, Altman concluded, could be the human workforce.

 

"It may take much longer for society to get really comfortable with this," Altman said. "But on the actual decision-making -- for most things -- maybe the AI is pretty good, pretty soon."

 

The idea of AI programs one day helping a business run itself has become a mainstream idea in Silicon Valley -- if not on Main Street.

 

Still, there are hurdles. "While large language models (LLMs) can exhibit impressive proficiency in isolated, short-term tasks, they often fail to maintain coherent performance over longer time horizons," the founders of Andon Labs, an AI researcher group, wrote in a February 2025 paper.

 

They created a test aimed at judging an AI's ability to handle "long-running business" situations called the Vending-Bench. To do that, the test tracks how various models do over time running a vending-machine business in simulation. This includes managing an imaginary inventory and suppliers.

 

During a public demonstration earlier this year for xAI, Elon Musk celebrated that his AI had done well in the benchmark.

 

"It's great to see that we've now got a way to pay for all those GPUs," Musk joked, referring to the expensive chips used to train AI. "We just need a million vending machines."

 

Creating AI is turning out to be hugely expensive. Google, OpenAI, xAi and other Big Tech players are betting big on the disruptive power of the advancing technology. Morgan Stanley, for example, has calculated the collective spending on AI by big tech companies at almost $3 trillion through 2028.

 

Recouping such investments would require world-changing developments, not simply running vending machines.

 

While some worry about what happens if the boom turns into a bust, investors have largely cheered on the big spending. Those investors are dreaming of entire industries being remade and new winners created.

 

And the tech bosses sound all too willing to encourage those dreams. They are suggesting robot workforces will rise to outnumber human populations, godlike smartglasses will replace iPhones as new computer paradigms and AI data centers will expand to outer space.

 

For some, however, the final frontier might be turning over the company to AI. Not everyone is ready for that.

 

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella, whose investment in OpenAI has helped catapult the Windows maker into the stratosphere, was asked in recent days by Axel Springer chief Mathias Dopfner if AI would be running companies someday.

 

"It's sort of too far-fetched for me," Nadella said. "There will be levels of automation that will be stunning five years from now, 10 years from now, when we look back at it, but there will be people."

 

Instead, Nadella described AI as more a tool than a god, delegating the technology to do a bunch of tasks and report back at the end of the day with results and seeking further guidance. Or, in other words, human led, AI operated. "Human agency is going to be very much part of it," he said.

 

If Nadella is wrong: What is there to aspire to if no brass ring is safe from the robot's grasp?

 

Gardening, perhaps.

 

Musk has basically suggested as much. The billionaire behind xAI, Tesla and other companies isn't one to be outdone in painting fantastical pictures of the future.

 

At last month's shareholder meeting, the Tesla CEO told investors that inevitably AI will hold all the power.

 

"If artificial intelligence vastly exceeds the sum of human intelligence, it is difficult to imagine that any humans will actually be in charge," he said. "So we just need to make sure the AI is friendly."

 

He made those comments shortly after shareholders approved a $1 trillion pay package that could pay out if he is truly successful in remaking the carmaker into a robotics company.

 

Musk has long talked about car factories run by robots -- the machine that makes the machine -- but has so far fallen far short of being able to simply turn off the factory lights and let the robots do the work.

 

It remains the dream. In recent days, Musk has reiterated his Sci-Fi Socialism ideals that AI and robots will relegate work to being optional.

 

Something of a hobby, he suggested, "in the same way that, like say, you can grow your own vegetables in your garden or you could go to the store and buy vegetables," he said. "It's much harder to grow your own vegetables. But some people like to grow their own vegetables."

 

OK, now try to imagine Musk content with a life filled with gardening.” [1]

 

1. AI's Next Challenge: Take the CEO's Job. Higgins, Tim.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 08 Dec 2025: B4.