>Corporate leaders are starting to question whether soaring AI spending is delivering meaningful returns.
We should start to question whether soaring CEO salary spending is delivering meaningful results.
We should start to question whether soaring CEO salary spending is delivering meaningful results.
In reality people are rarely rich based on merit alone.
EDIT: Sorry it was a really clever joke.
I sincerely hope that was your attempt at sarcasm.
"Successful" in which sense?
The most reasonable definition "Successful in convincing other people to give them money" is rather a tautology. :-)
A very related problem concerning your argument is well-known for decades: the Principal–agent problem:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
It says that the self-interest of an agent (e.g. the CEO) is not identical to the interests of the principal (e.g. the shareholders).
Why do I mention this? The CEO being rich is a measurement of the financial success of the agent, but not of the principal. You are rather interested in measuring the success of the principal.
And the answer is no, because when chief officers succeed it's because of their genius and forward thinking posture, but when they fail it's none of their fault, so they are shielded in an echo chamber that produces such delusions and psychosis.
So much time has passed that I believe truly the current crop of execs don't know any better, they think this status quo is the only way to manage companies. They aren't really wrong since the incentives are there, and they continue to reap rewards from doing it.
By the time he died (pretty recently actually, 2020!), it was pretty obvious what kind of legacy he was leaving behind. Which is probably why his family was very careful to keep his burial location secret, presumably to keep people from peeing on his grave.