r/gaming • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 PC • 10h ago

Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI and layoff-happy CEOs: 'Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis'

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dwarf-fortress-creator-says-the-industrys-in-shambles-over-ai-and-layoff-happy-ceos-everyone-i-know-their-bosses-are-slowly-getting-psychosis/
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2.4k

u/HandsomeHeathen 10h ago

Ironically, CEO is probably the one job in the tech sector where an LLM could fully replace a human. I mean, they can't do a worse job.

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u/Lambdafish1 10h ago

Unfortunately it would do exactly as it's told and calculate the path that gets the board the absolute most short term money, without taking into account product experience.

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u/Almechik 10h ago

So no change

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u/talspr 10h ago

Big change, millions saved in CEO pay

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u/Gasparde 9h ago

Considering rising token costs, probably not saving all that much money tbh.

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u/Toofcraka 9h ago

Save more money by not talking to the new CEO. Win win

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u/HardcorePizza 7h ago

One locally hosted llm is way cheaper than a ceo's salary

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u/s101c 4h ago

$20K in hardware costs if you need to host a really good one. Pretty good compared to those golden parachutes

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u/BloomerBoomerDoomer 7h ago

Even with rising costs, that CEO yearly wage of millions would definitely not be a thing anymore.

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u/Lost_Birthday_3138 7h ago

Open weight models FTW

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u/Oryzae 6h ago

Considering rising token costs

They are dropping rather quickly, tbh. But the bill is going up lol

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u/Chicagorobby 4h ago

That's the neat part. We'll hire CEOs that will use AI for their decision making, so double the CEO cost.

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u/Grokent 2h ago

CEO's only make like 1 decision a week. The tokens aren't that much. That's why CEO's have time to hold like 6 jobs and sit on 4 boards. The real overly-employed people are CEO's.

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u/icecore 9h ago

Saved by the major shareholders, AKA capitalists.

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u/Lost_Birthday_3138 7h ago

I'm sure the equity would trickle down to the workers

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u/Dire87 8h ago

You're missing a key aspect: the face. The CEO is technically responsible for the decisions they make. Who is going to be responsible when the AI makes all the decisions? The programmers? In reality, of course, they get a golden parachute and just move on, but they're the face of the company, and they can, in theory (!) think outside the box and also make risky calls or go against the grain ... or gasp think about the long-term strategy and their consumers. An AI doesn't do that. Because it can't.

It's the same idea that you could just get an AI to take care of your stock market investments. It sounds good on paper at first ... it's not a guarantee you'll ever make any money or not lose everything. On the contrary. Because the AI cannot make predictions (doesn't help that they're often lagging a few years behind, unless they have unlimited access to the current day internet). It will certainly TELL you it made a prediction based on blablabla, but that is a lie and is worthless. Because it has no thoughts. It will look at numbers, it will probably check history, but it cannot make predictions of the future. But to be fair, most of us can't really, either. ;)

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u/MinimumSilver5814 8h ago

You’re right. They’re technically responsible. Not actually responsible to the point of seeing consequences for their actions. Consequences are for the plebs.

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u/Secret_Eating_ 8h ago

Well these companies are trying to weasel their way out of bad decisions their agents make in customer service, so ultimately what's the value in any AI to replace labour? 

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u/RateMost4231 8h ago

You can't beat a LLM to death in front of its kids, so you can't have one run a business. 

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u/SomeDumbDoggo 6h ago

i mean... we could burn down a datacenter and make sam altman watch?

(i feel i should be extra clear and say this is a joke, not a call to violence but also fuck AI)

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u/qwoto 2h ago

When has that happened to a CEO? For research of course 

1

u/pattperin 7h ago

It would be somehow even less ethical is the only change. Like we’d now have to work in gimp suits for “productivity” or whatever

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u/ABetterKamahl1234 8h ago

Some CEOs will resist some things, but others are greased by the paycheck.

This would remove the paycheck expense but turn them all to the latter category.

Not all C-suite wants to go through golden parachutes, it can be pretty competitive and hard to get another c-suite job, and this current climate is very much still going to be that at that level.

Remember, a lot of the perception is they're greedy as hell, but not actually stupid. Not getting paid is a surefire way to not have their lifestyle.

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u/Askolei 10h ago

Would we notice a difference?

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u/Pentaras1977 10h ago

Well actually, done properly, maybe. You have to feed all the Vision, Strategy, Values , Environmental Targets and other things that Companies have to express their goody good side only to ignore. If fed to the AI, it would adhere it to the last sentence. That and minus the narcissist behavior.

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u/JeveGreen 10h ago

So maybe, but probably not?

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u/Antique-Coach-214 10h ago

Depends. Tell the AI to preserve a mix of long and short term growth, and not to maximize profits at the expense of long term existence.

That nets to a far different scenario than a majority of companies now.

You’d see a lot of people fired preemptively based on possible legal violations as well

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u/cross_the_threshold 10h ago

They'd do a far better job, CEOs are basically a shitty LLM at this point with the overriding instructions of "fuck everyone beneath me."

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u/JeveGreen 9h ago

Well, LLMs don't have an ego at least, that much is true...

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u/b0w3n 9h ago

Yeah in terms of "doing a better job" LLMs would probably succeed and are often less narcissistic and psychopathic in how they interact with prompts and others. They do also consider the larger picture outside of quarterly profits. This is why, despite his best efforts, Musk hasn't been able to beat out how critical Grok is of alt-right, fascist shit or how critical it is of himself personally (truth has a liberal bias).

(Yes I realize I'm anthropomorphizing a bit, it's for brevity of conversation)

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u/h-v-smacker 6h ago

That and minus the narcissist behavior.

Like a boss!

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u/Dire87 8h ago

You've never met an "AI" before I take it. They're all narcissists in hiding. It would also, obviously, be programmed in such a way to NOT adhere to those principles when they conflict with "more profits".

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u/pschon 10h ago

Yes, but what about the LLM?

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u/DisillusionedHobbit 9h ago

No, because the prompts would be written by idiot C-levels seeking validation for whatever dumbass schemes their cocaine habit dreamt up. 

See:  the publisher trying to screw the Subnautica devs out of their bonus

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u/FlamingWeasel 9h ago

What's really funny there to me is he tried to get chatgpt to find a reason to not pay and even it was like, nah you gotta pay. What a dumbass.

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u/sam_hammich 9h ago

Probably more likely the prompts would be written by the board

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u/DisillusionedHobbit 9h ago

Board members are just idiot C-levels from other corps that gather together now and again to do the dumbest shit imaginable. 

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u/ErikT738 10h ago edited 10h ago

A computer might not gamble they'll be the company whose live service game is actually successful.

Edit - I asked an LLM and it basically told me to make Helldivers 2 without naming Helldivers 2.

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u/frequenZphaZe 7h ago

A computer might not gamble they'll be the company whose live service game is actually successful.

maybe not in the first response. LLMs aren't strongly opinionated, so the prompt can just keep asking "but wouldn't a live service gamble be better?" and after two or three turns, the LLM will just say "Yeah, you're right. Let's try a live service gamble. That seems like the correct approach"

LLMs aren't truth machines. they aren't search engines. they're platitude generators. they just need a couple tries to figure out what you actually wanna hear

1

u/s101c 4h ago

Depends on the LLM. Some are trained to agree with you to sound friendly, there are also other new ones trained to pursue an impossible task autonomously and not give up. The latter ones can give you a very different result.

1

u/Head-Ad-6738 4h ago

But CEO is not the one coming up with new ideas. Realistically some mid level employee sent 50 of "potential new games" and CEO has to pick a few to commit to.

Now can you ask LLM to pick some good options out of some bad ones? I'm sure as hell it won't be worse than CEO...

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u/PrimalZed 10h ago

LLMs don't calculate. It would bullshit something that looks maybe plausible.

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u/amurica1138 10h ago

Yeah, but can an LLM golf with the other LLMs running the other multi-nationals?

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u/Yegas 9h ago

They calculate if you give them a calculator and tell them to use it.

AI is a mix of many technologies, not just a language predictor locked in a faraday cage

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u/PrimalZed 9h ago

There is no calculator to "calculate the path that gets the board the absolute most short term money" - they are assuming some fictitious AI magic.

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u/wetwetwetwetdogs 8h ago

So no difference, then

1

u/JeanLucPicardAND 7h ago

So basically no change from the status quo with human CEOs?

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u/Throwawayrip1123 9h ago

A CEO like Musk or Bezos are basically free tier gpt llms anyway. Literally just yapping with no substance behind it, hoping nobody will call them out on their bullshit.

Actually, they're even worse than that, llms can at least day "hey, you're right, I just made that up". You'd catch a brick to the head in a wooden church before an god the cunts admit any wrongdoing.

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u/Zerokx 9h ago

If that kills the company quicker more power to them

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u/GenericFatGuy 8h ago

Like we said, they can't do a worse job.

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u/aCleverGroupofAnts 8h ago

It wouldn't calculate that because LLMs don't do math that way. It would come up with a plan that sounds like it will produce short term gains. Don't forget these models are nowhere near as capable as the people marketing them want you to believe.

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u/ClinchClonch 7h ago

That's a problem for the next CEO. When the current CEO leaves everything is green!

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u/Tearpusher 6h ago

I think we should start expecting and demanding that companies have a mission beyond “make as much money as possible.” If we regulated some of this profiteering bullshit companies would need to make space for principles and vision.

Hopefully we won’t be lost in this horse armor hellhole forever. I have faith we won’t. 

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u/Lambdafish1 5h ago

We do expect and demand that, what we need is for shareholders to start expecting that, which will never happen

0

u/Tearpusher 5h ago

Then we have them removed.

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u/Lambdafish1 2h ago

Then there is no money

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u/Tearpusher 2h ago

Good

1

u/Lambdafish1 2h ago

Then there are no games

0

u/Tearpusher 2h ago

Then we shall play Dwarf fortress

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u/Federal_Scarcity_84 6h ago

Well, for a lot of investors long-term growth is much more useful. Short term is generally only best for the CEO, so an AI with the right task...

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u/kingnickolas 4h ago

"calculate" as in guestimate ie exactly what they already do

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u/superearthjanitor0 4h ago

cgpt and grok seem far less delusional than the average CEO and understand or at least say that short termism destroys companies. Maybe we need to replace the board and investors with AI too since meatbags are stupidly greedy and hate thinking long term.

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u/Reagalan 2h ago

Slaughter all the dairy cattle. Beef production tripled in one year.

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u/Talentagentfriend 9h ago

This actually explains whats been happening for the past couple of years.

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u/Lupushonora 9h ago

As well as what has already been said, IIRC a big part of the CEO role is accountablility, to be the fall guy when the company messes up big time. They take all the blame, get fired with a cushy exit package and then get replaced by the real decision makers, the board of directors.

An AI can't be reliably be held accountable, so eventually responsibility could potentially fall on the people who put it in place, defeating the point of having someone to publicly take responsibility for most of the companies decisions.

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u/Ok_Cardiologist_3675 9h ago

I’ve had good and bad CEOs. A good ceo you never hear about at the grunt level unless they’re getting the company additional business. Which unfortunately an AI can’t attend parties and get drunk with other CEOs to get deals signed.

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u/KingOfRisky 6h ago

Most of reddit has no clue what its like working for an actual corporation and just uses CEO as a boogeyman term.

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u/Eighth_Octavarium 4h ago

What do you mean, don't they just sit at their desk petting their cat, occasionally pressing the big red "CAPITALISM" button at their desk that instantly lays off people and emails shareholders one jillion stocks?

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u/CopainChevalier 6h ago

I love seeing people who either don't have jobs or have an end career path of Mcdonalds cashier talk about how CEOs don't do anything lmao

1

u/KingOfRisky 4h ago

I always get a kick out of "FIRE THE CEO" when layoffs happen. Layoffs obviously suck but getting rid of the head of your company will never result in anything good. Are there some CEOS that deserve to get canned? Yep.

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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 6h ago

Hating AI and CEOs is the new "When does the narwhal Bacon?"

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u/errorsniper 4h ago

I mean I get what you are saying. But an LLM ordering 13 trillion bolts after liquidating the companies stock holdings breaking countless laws and not paying any taxes on the proceeds because someone asked what it means to "bolt home?" would be worse.

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u/JerryOne111 10h ago

Sadly, CEO are mostly just for the networking they have to reach the unreachable. LLM aint gonna make other CEO able to pickup their phone the moment they saw the phone number.

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u/Pale-Try-4802 10h ago

2 LLM ceo's would, though.

 Faster, more efficient and without expensive "networking" golf trips.

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u/Khaldara 10h ago

“Sir the LLM has somehow begun to sexually harass applications that are still in beta.”

‘Finally they’re indistinguishable from human leadership!’

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u/Monte924 9h ago

"We just got an HR complaint about the LLM sending explicit texts to the secretary"

"Didn't we replace the secretary with an Ai"

"Yes..."

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u/Dmon69 10h ago

"You've injected that report into the wrong slot, Harry!"

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u/JebryathHS 9h ago

The boards of directors of most companies are stuffed full of the CEOs of different companies. AI CEOs won't take off while the people responsible for the decision consider them a threat to their own jobs. 

CEOs using AI to do 99% of their jobs? Probably already happening in a huge number of businesses.

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u/Pale-Try-4802 8h ago

the singularity will be when LLM CEOs outvote the meat space CEOs.

It will be like the Matrix, but boring and corporate.

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u/Nolzi 8h ago

LLM CEOs from the same LLM vendor doing shady deals

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u/rzenni 10h ago

I mean, half the customer service I deal with is bots at this point

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u/BrotherRoga 10h ago

And the rest are underpaid, overworked and can't even access the required places to actually do what you ask because the systems are from the 1950s.

If the customers saw what their customer service locations are like, every location would close within the week. The proverbial sausage is made in a putrid place indeed.

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u/GraeWraith 10h ago

If the other CEO is AI, yes it will.

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u/Eternal_Bagel 7h ago

Would Delamain really be that much worse in charge of a game company?

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u/GraeWraith 6h ago

It would be his children.

Del was born beyond the Wall. We've only got homegrowns.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/FirstSurvivor 10h ago

There is zero chance of ego, nepotism or favoritism

Aren't LLMs notorious for having the exact same biases as the training data, and recruitment LLM firms being sued for discrimination exactly because that that?

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u/Badbullet 10h ago

They need to train from the employee handbook and the 3 hour long discrimination and sexual harassment videos I had to watch last month.

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u/7818 8h ago

They already trained on versions of that content and it's still racist

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u/Berkuts_Lance_Plus 8h ago

Assuming the training is competent and the output is sanity checked

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u/savanttm 8h ago

Training data has biases, but it's really about what the board asks for. If it includes "sustainable and growing profits" then the LLM is likely to avoid private equity strategies to boost short-term profits and load the company with debt. It also gives the board some plausible deniability for any long-term strategy when a large shareholder brings a suit claiming the company failed to maximize profits - they just get the LLM to spout some point-by-point justification and they can get back to business.

0

u/The_OG_Yttrx 9h ago

Absolutely, which is one of the reasons a ten trillion parameter model (like mythos) is better than a 1 trillion parameter model, like Sonnet. The wider and deeper the training data, the less biased-- ostensibly speaking. There are many, many other things in play as well-- internal weights and guardrails can really swing the model in specific censored directions. -- But an abliterated, uncensored Qwen for example. is really very objective, but abliterating and uncensoring it is complicated and time consuming. You can decensor any model with open weights though, including the giant versions of Kimi K3, Deepseek, etc.

Though I'm here to tell you-- its well worth it.

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u/Mknalsheen 10h ago

If boards weren't also bestie with CEOs and getting kickbacks/favors from them, this might be true.

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u/yoberf 9h ago

They’ll use evidence-based best practices instead of gut instincts in every decision

You mean the technology that is frequently confidently wrong about easy to look up facts will definitely be reliable in picking best practices? Ok buddy.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/yoberf 8h ago

So you're just making up an imaginary hypothetical. Got it.

The industry trend is not smarter data sets. It's larger data sets. How would an LLM even get a set of data that is only good CEO decisions?

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u/[deleted] 8h ago edited 6h ago

[deleted]

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u/yoberf 6h ago

There is a very limited supply of MBA text books compared to the size of the databases companies are using for general AI. All MBA textbooks, vs All ALL books and all human writing on the Internet. So with such a small data set, and companies seeking larger and larger data sets, and current AI being really bad at stuff with the current data sets, I'd say your MBA textbook based CEO AI is gonna be hot garbage.

Also, limited dataset doesn't prevent hallucination, so your whole point about the data set is moot. The vibe code produced by AI is also hot garbage.

-1

u/BaconIsntThatGood 7h ago

So you're just making up an imaginary hypothetical. Got it.

Companies literally take open source LLMs all the time and train their own purpose built model.

The person you're replying to isn't talking about subscribing to Claude code and saying "be ceo"

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u/ADHDick_in_ur_mouth 9h ago

This simply is not true of AI in 2026. Hallucination is a solved problem

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u/yoberf 9h ago edited 9h ago

Are you an LLM? Because that's a confident lie. LLM hallucination is unsolvable. It can be somewhat mitigated, but it cannot be solved.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4927094

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u/Throwawayrip1123 9h ago

Unless LLMs had a paradigm shift of monumental proportions and their underlying tech stack changed, you will literally never get rid of hallucinations, they will never be a solved problem - regardless of how many loops and harnesses you build on top of that swamp.

It is, and I repeat, quite literally, built into the very bedrock of what an llm is. There is nothing you can do to eliminate hallucinations entirely. Cutting off the Anus won't stop a human from pooping, putting self checks and loops on top of an llm won't stop it from hallucinating, it'll just catch it more often and try to rectify.

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u/Dire87 8h ago

But I can cut out the colon ... and the stomach ... no more poop! And no more human, either.

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u/Alt_SWR 9h ago

How does one say something so stupid so confidently? Literally just use AI for any google search for more than a few minutes and you'll be proven utterly wrong about that.

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u/littledog95 9h ago

Fucking lol

-1

u/Dire87 8h ago

It so is not ... source: me prompting anything. I have to ask 10 more times, and the AI will give me 10 different answers. The only semi-reliable output you get is if you demand actual sources, then check said sources yourself, which just means the "AI" we're using today is an improved Google search, because the Google search we have now is borderline non-functional since the introduction of "AI". We've come full circle. You cannot find anything relevant via the traditional search anymore, you basically have to use the AI search function, THEN check what you wanted to check.

NEVER trust any output without verifying it first via sources. Because it will blatantly "lie" to you just to give you a result it "thinks you want to hear". That's what happens most of the time I use it. I ask it something, then I want to confirm it ... and it immediately contradicts itself. I could ask it something about a certain game... and it would either just make shit up or just use the terminology I used, instead of giving me the correct terms. I have to ask it several more times and hope that 1 of the answers is correct. Granted, I mostly have to use it for language and translation stuff (a game's terminology in another language is really hard to find most of the time), but the point remains.

-1

u/BaconIsntThatGood 7h ago

It's not a solved problem but it happens dramatically less than people think it does. At least when it comes to using a model with access to proper context and reasonable guard rails setup.

Even then it's still a problem and needs to have guidance and supervision.

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u/Throwawayrip1123 9h ago

While I agree that a free tier gpt is better than any of the main fucks in big companies, what you just said is objectively wrong.

It's a hallucination engine that forgets half the context it had, makes up the other half and literally tries to gaslight you on the regular.

They’ll use evidence-based best practices instead of gut instincts in every decision

That's also objectively wrong, seen by anyone who used them for programming - llms think "best practices" is a yoga magazine, or some shit. And any evidence can, and often is, just straight up fabricated by them. Much like the ceos.

No possibility of sexual harassment or bullying. There would be no salary or golden parachute requirement,

That's basically the gist of why they're better. They won't focus on them profiting, so they're instantly a level higher than your billionaire CEO.

That's like the only job where llms we have now are objectively better, right now, and should be implemented ASAP. I know tesla and Twitter would profit massively from cutting that potato shaped malignant cancer out.

3

u/Razier 7h ago

LLMs are also notoriously bad at turning a profit. Every experiment like this so far has ended up in disaster.

2

u/-NewYork- 9h ago

Wouldn't Google AI have and inbuilt favoritism towards Google ecosystem?

1

u/Rejusu 8h ago

Boards don't care. They're the ones enabling these practices so they can get their paydays and then they get out.

1

u/BicFleetwood 8h ago edited 7h ago

Assuming the training is competent and the output is sanity checked, a LLM CEO is virtually guaranteed to make better business decisions than a human CEO. They’ll use evidence-based best practices instead of gut instincts in every decision.

LLMs DO NOT do analysis. They don't examine "evidence." They spit out words that SOUND like they did. Their function is not to give you sound outputs. Their function is to convince you their outputs are sound. They are sophisticated auto-complete whose only calculation is an attempt to predict what you WANT to hear. That's why they are so sycophantic at a fundamental design level.

They don't "hallucinate" any more than a slot machine "hallucinates" when it doesn't give you the jackpot.

EVERYTHING the LLM produces is nonsense and thoughtless because the machine does not think. The ONLY difference between "good" outputs and "hallucinations" is whether or not YOU decided it sounds good--whether it met YOUR expectations. Every time the LLM produces a response, you are pulling the lever on the slot machine. Whether or not the output is "good" depends on what you came into the room WANTING the output to be.

It is a LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL. Its ONLY function is to predict and generate linguistic outputs. The only machine learning happening in a LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL is the predictive linguistic calculation. It is NOT an analysis machine, it is not doing evidentiary analysis, it is fundamentally incapable of actually weighing information because it doesn't understand what the words MEAN, only the predictive values of their use in an output. This is why it can't tell you how many "R's" are in the word "strawberry," because it's not reading the word "strawberry." It doesn't see the letters. It's reading a tokenized code that it internally associates with other tokens which is then outputted in the end-stage for the human user as the word "strawberry."

It is literally a machine that is designed for the explicit purpose of making you think it's thinking without actually thinking. It is the automation of a confidence scam. It is a machine designed to trick you into believing it.

-1

u/Morthra PC 10h ago

If a board could get away with using AI instead of spending obscene amounts on a good CEO they would.

3

u/triangletooth 10h ago

Replace the board too. Who needs humans to hold wealth? They've had their turn.

/s

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u/GoblinToHobgoblin 8h ago

When you realize that the CEOs job is to get as much money as possible in the short term, you realize that they are actually quite competent most of the time unfortunately 

3

u/_JustCallMeBen_ 8h ago

But they won't. Because they are the ones calling the shots and their friends on the board won't harm them, as CEOs and board members are a never ending carousel of back scratchers.

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u/gizmosticles 9h ago

Idk about that. CEO has a lot of politics, stakeholder management, strategic direction setting. I am not clear that even the best agents of this and near future generations are going to be good at those skills

2

u/Chm_Albert_Wesker 9h ago

this is what aggravates me the most working in a tech company: more and more of the latent knowledge base is being weathered as these consultants and AI models determine how to trim the workforce while dumping the extra work on who remains...but then there will be more and more layers of management. and you KNOW that the whole ladder is just one rung passing information to the next rung etc. when realistically you could remove half of those rungs and just pass up the info all the same

2

u/1-gp 7h ago

For a million a year, you can run four simultaneous CEOs

2

u/HKBFG 7h ago

It already has replaced junior devs and is working its way up to architect positions.

2

u/hymen_destroyer 5h ago

I read a hilarious short story about a company trying to hollow itself out with AI-directed layoffs, and the AI keeps telling them "your corporate structure is bloated and inefficient, you need to reduce executive salaries and trim out unnecessary managerial roles" and they're like "this AI sucks"

...🤔 actually maybe that wasn't a short story, that might have been a news piece! Seems pretty on-the-nose for 2026

2

u/npsimons linux 2h ago

Not even ironically. I mean, can you imagine if there were no CEO's? Where workers had to band together, taking input from the SMEs among them, and then following that guidance to achieve a common cause?

I mean, that sounds like some silly fantasy!

2

u/waltzbyear 1h ago

I mean let's be real. You know those games where you run a company, like hospital simulator, etc. CEOs are basically the pilot of that, and that's their extent. Naysayers can try to make the argument for complexity, and they'd still be wrong. AIs can do much more complex set of tasks than a CEO could possibly do and then more. And what's funny is the temperament of a CEO is pushed towards a cold, robotic personality anyway. So you can't say a CEO does his job well and keeps everyone happy.

Their actual responsibilities are highly objective, and tied down with numerical values. There's no subjectivity. If you try to do something subjective as a CEO, it's a risk. And it's been shown over and over that AI can do the exact tasks a CEO can do, down to the Tee. They could probably perform better than any CEO on the market.

2

u/Neither_Berry_100 8h ago

I don't think CEOs, management, and finance bros really bring anything to the table. If anything the CEOs are just making demands without enough understanding of what they are talking about.

I will admit though that engineers have a problem. You especially see this kind of thing in their side projects where their work may be technical but not successful as a business. Real businesses cannot operate at a loss. Engineers need help staying on track.

1

u/HandsomeHeathen 7h ago

Agreed - management is a necessary part of any business, but in large companies it gets to the point where the upper management is so disconnected from both the actual work being done and the needs of the customers that they really don't provide any value to anyone (other than shareholders, and even then only in the immediate short term).

1

u/Rabid-GNN 9h ago

Looking at you Roblox CEO

1

u/n4noNuclei 7h ago

LLM seem to be pretty good at managing.

1

u/hamsterkill 7h ago

CEOs are already heavily leaning on AI to do their jobs.

Fuckin' Krafton's asked ChatGPT how they could get out of paying a contract bonus to the Subnautica devs. He even overruled the AI when it advised him not to - leading to lawsuits, brand damage, and still paying the bonus.

1

u/mouseywalla 7h ago

I feel like an actual real good CEO exists as a punching bag and a figurehead. I think AI would do poor in either of those categories as they can't take accountability.

1

u/Zaphod1620 4h ago

I dunno about a CEO, but it has been shown many times middle management can easily be replaced with current AI. 

1

u/GreenAnder 4h ago

Most of the job of a CEO is to network and be a cheerleader for investors.

1

u/MrSomeoneElse32 3h ago

Unfortunately the most important factor of a CEO is that you can pin all the blame on them. Until you can blame the LLM with no consequences to the board members, CEOs will continue to be the highest paid fall guy.

1

u/RazsterOxzine 5h ago

Actually I made my Qwen3.8 27b my CEO of a project I'm working on. I used Pi harness and it's skills to create the base levels for my CEO and allowed it to create it's own skills. I start it up in the morning and have it pickup where we left off the the day and revise any deadlines 'we' set. Its great because it can be CEO/CTO/Marketing. Does a lot of searching online optimal treads. A tool that has helped me without making me get all crazy like the rest.

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u/funkme1ster PC 9h ago

Jokes aside, it wouldn't.

Not because CEO is a difficult job, but because the priorities are wrong.

The position of CEO doesn't DO anything material. It's a president's job to lead a company and set productivity goals. The role of CEO is about stock price optimization ane nothing else. It's about running a con game on the public/investors and insisting you're gonna go to the moon any second, and then telling the president "hey, so I made a bunch of insane promises I cannot keep, but if you can then we'll get lots of money so... figure that shit out for me. Thanks."

People KNOW that LLMs hallucinate and might be too skeptical to invest, but a human can be confidently wrong in a way that other humans can mistakenly assume is sincere, since they know the other humans know the cost of promising impossible things.

1

u/HandsomeHeathen 9h ago

You're not wrong, but I still kinda think there are enough idiots out there that would just believe whatever line of bull the LLM fed them.

0

u/rollwithhoney 9h ago

many companies do not have presidents, and the ceo does run everything internally...

that said you're quite right, the CEOs job is to raise capital and be the face of the company for clients and investors. In the 2020s the job has increasingly gotten closer to "marketing"/CMO than the traditional CFO equivalent. Jokes aside, AI can't replace this. It could potentially for specific companies, but investors do not want the same AI running every company, that would not be a happy investment for them

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u/average_lfc_fan 8h ago

This is such a braindead take lmao

2

u/CleanMyBalls 6h ago

You just know these mfs don’t have real jobs

0

u/Shot-Arugula8264 7h ago

Try it! Go start a company and be CEO. So easy anyone can do it!

1

u/HandsomeHeathen 7h ago

CEOs are usually not the person who started the company. They are not innovators. Their skillset is grifting, bullshitting, and talking without saying anything of value; coincidentally, some of the few things LLMs are also good at.

1

u/Shot-Arugula8264 7h ago

CEOs are usually not the person who started the company

There are over 36 million small businesses in the USA. You do understand that the overwhelming majority of them are still run by the founder, right?

And wait, are you saying that CEOs are actually legit if any only if they started the company themselves? Why is that?

I’m trying to parse through your bewildering position and logic here.

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u/HandsomeHeathen 6h ago

Small business owners generally don't go by "CEO" as a title (though there's nothing stopping them doing so if they want people to think they're a prick).

In any case, small businesses aren't what I was talking about. My underlying point was that CEOs of large tech companies (honestly large companies in general, but I was specifically talking about the tech sector) have no real stake in the long term success or failure of the company, since they are usually only hired for a few years to eke out some short-term shareholder value, and then leave with a golden parachute. They generally don't provide any benefit to either the employees or the end users. Therefore an LLM, even if it does a crap job, will probably still cause less long-term harm to a company than a typical human CEO (and cost a lot less).

Admittedly I'm being somewhat facetious when I say that, but there's still a kernel of truth to it. CEOs are low-value employees with unnecessarily high salaries and a skillset that overlaps more with what LLMs can do (that is, talk bullshit) than that of the employees that LLMs are actually replacing.

1

u/Shot-Arugula8264 6h ago

Small business owners generally don’t go by “CEO” as a title

This might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Have you EVER actually met a business owner/CEO in real life?

In any case, small businesses aren’t what I was talking about. My underlying point was that CEOs of large tech companies (honestly large companies in general, but I was specifically talking about the tech sector)

Lmao this keeps getting better. Wait wait wait. Are you saying that operating LARGE TECH companies is easier than operating small ones? The bigger it is, the complicated it is, the easier it is to operate? Am I understanding that correctly?

have no real stake in the long term success or failure of the company

The overwhelming majority of CEO compensation is in equity explicitly to tie it to the company’s success.

But wait. I bet you’re about to say “stock price is only about near term results! It doesn’t reflect long-term value!!!”

Go look at the equity value of SpaceX. Go look at their short-term results. Now, are you actually going to tell me, with a straight face, that the market values companies only on near-term performance and not the long-term vision?

Some people are beyond help, I swear.

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u/Altruistic-Toe-5990 5h ago

..says the person who has almost definitely never been close to the role..

Companies aren't paying huge amounts of money to a CEO for nothing. If it could be replaced by AI it would have been.

2

u/HandsomeHeathen 5h ago

It hasn't been done because that decision would be made by the board of directors, and the CEOs are all directors on the board of each other's companies. They're not gonna break ranks and replace one of their peers, otherwise there's no guarantee they won't be next.

(I don't actually think an LLM could fully replace a human CEO, but it'd come a hell of a lot closer than it would to fully replacing a human developer. And save a lot more money.)

0

u/Altruistic-Toe-5990 5h ago

The parts of a developer's job that AI isn't good at is the entire job description for a CEO: judgement and making good decisions

1

u/HandsomeHeathen 4h ago

Yes, but they use that judgement to make decisions solely in their own self-interest. An LLM just spitting out buzzwords essentially at random would quite possibly do less damage.

1

u/Altruistic-Toe-5990 4h ago

Damage to who? Their job is to make the company successful. An LLM would have it crash and burn.

Your hatred of CEOs should be directed at capitalism, not the people operating within its rules.

None of us act out of pure altruism. Don't tell me all those software developers who built the abusive apps we have today weren't doing it from a place of self interest.

1

u/HandsomeHeathen 3h ago

My hatred of CEOs and my hatred of capitalism are one and the same. The billionaire class aren't players in the game, they're the ones running it.

1

u/Altruistic-Toe-5990 3h ago

most CEOs aren't billionaires, btw

1

u/HandsomeHeathen 3h ago

I'm sure there are plenty of CEOs who are decent, normal people.

I'm equally sure that the ones laying off employees and replacing them with AI aren't among them.