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Comment by btbuildem | Hacker News Reader

I am still of the conviction that "reducing employee head count" with AI should start at the top of the org chart. The current iterations of AI already talk like the C-suites, and deliver approximately same value. It would provide additional benefits, in that AIs refuse to do unethical things and generally reason acceptably well. The cost cutting would be immense!

I am not kidding. In any large corps, the decision makers refuse to take any risks, show no creativity, move as a flock with other orgs, and stay middle-of-the-road, boring, beige khaki. The current AIs are perfect for this.

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Not a crazy idea. Sergey at Google said it's best at replacing managers fwiw

why isn't he doing it then?

> I am still of the conviction that "reducing employee head count" with AI should start at the top of the org chart. The current iterations of AI already talk like the C-suites

That is exactly what it can't do. We need someone to hold liable in key decisions.

Right, because one really widely-known fact about CEOs is that whenever anything goes wrong at a company, they take the full blame, and if it's criminal, they go to jail!

....hey, wait a sec....

"Wow this AI both writes and reads email? That's about 90 percent of my job and -- I presume -- 90 percent of what happens around here!"

AND it can sit meetings all day and not forget any decisions; that's the other 90 percent of a manager's day.

And just like senior managers, every time you ask it a question, it starts a new context.

Can it turn simple yes-or-no questions, or "hey who's the person I need to ask about X?" into scheduled phone calls that inexplicably invite two or three other people as an excuse to fill up its calendar so it looks very busy?

It's not the top IME, but the big fat middle of the org chart (company age seems to mirror physical age maybe?) where middle to senior managers can hide out, deliver little demonstratable value and ride with the tides. Some of these people are far better at surfing the waves than they are at performing the tasks of their job title, and they will outlast you, both your political skills and your tolerance for BS.

One could argue that they deliver a better value than meat leaders.

> In any large corps, the decision makers refuse to take any risks, show no creativity, move as a flock with other orgs, and stay middle-of-the-road, boring, beige khaki.

It's hard to take this sentiment seriously from a source that doesn't have direct experience with the c-suite. The average person only gets to see the "public relations" view of the c-suite (mostly the CEO) so I can certainly see why a "LLM based mouthpiece" might be better.

The c-suite is involved in thousands of decisions that 90% of the rest of the world is not privy to.

FWIW - As a consumer, I'm highly critical of the robotic-like external personas the c-suite take on so I can appreciate the sentiment, but it's simply not rooted in any real experience.

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