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Comment by xvxvx | Hacker News Reader

C-level FOMO strikes again.

Let’s be blunt: any CEO or executive that fell for this AI wealth extraction needs to be fired ASAP. These are not the type of people who you want running a company.

My own company hired a new CEO in Q1 and in his first company address he declared that anyone not using AI for their daily duties was putting themselves out of a job and would be unemployable by anyone else. I laughed at that nonsense. 5 months later and we’ve seen zero growth or improvements due to AI. This chucklehead CEO will be the unemployable one.

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> This chucklehead CEO will be the unemployable one.

The chucklehead CEO will get a severance package worth more than you've made in your life and walk into another C-suite position courtesy of his golfing buddies.

Your version is a lovely thing to daydream about, though.

My prediction: AI will cause so much damage to those who adopted it, it will become a slur. Anyone involved in it, or who embraced it to the detriment of their business, will be shunned. It will be the sign of poor judgement.

> These are not the type of people who you want running a company.

This is quite literally the opposite of reality, and it's funny to see internet experts that haven't so much as raised 100k always criticize seasoned C-level execs. Not that C-levels are geniuses or something (in fact a lot of times they're idiots), but there's a very good reason people are flocking to AI. The downside is relatively minor: a few million wasted, whatever; while the upside could be generational: being on the forefromt of an internet-level technology.

It's easy to make fun of bad ideas in retrospect (the Metaverse, VR, blockchain, etc.) but what people forget is that good ideas are often indistinguishable from bad ideas. So you should (as a tech company; not as a bank or as a hospital) generally prefer a CEO that's willing to swing for the fences rather than someone timid and overly conservative.

Calling it a few million is laughable.

Regarding the Metaverse, VR, blockchain, etc. people were antagonistic towards them at the time, not in retrospect. If anything, people are showing much more hatred towards AI than any of these aforementioned technologies.

The downside is far from minor: seasoned employees are being let go, taking with them the very knowledge and skillsets that built these companies, likely never to return. All for a gamble on new tech that has yet to produce anything resembling worthwhile.

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