> The biotech company late last year announced the creation of a new role, chief people and digital technology officer, promoting its human resources chief Tracey Franklin to the spot.
I've been wondering recently when boards of directors will realize that the role of CEO might quite acceptably be split into two parts: an executive, who makes decisions to implement a high-level vision based on data and cold-blooded analysis, and (for lack of a better word) a culture head, who is the public face of the company, and keeps relationships with people, and gives inspiring speeches, and so on.
The executive part, it seems to me, might quite adequately be replaced by an AI. I don't even mean a hypothetical future AI, I mean literally the level of GPT models we have today. People's response to this is often "but what about genius visionaries like Steve Jobs?" and I admit that they can't be replaced. But, I'm talking about the median CEO, of the median corporation. Or even the bottom 80%, maybe. I don't think that part of their job is safe from AI in the medium term, except by gatekeeping and inertia. I firmly believe AI could do as good a job at that than most CEOs, and better than many, more cheaply, and more predictably.
(Everybody else's jobs aren't safe from AI, of course. It's just a matter of AI agents working up the ladder of complexity, from intern-level work, to junior, then senior, and so on. An important assumption here is that the executive part of being a CEO is not particularly difficult, or different from what AI has been shown to excel at already. Just that once the decision maker's job is in danger of being replaced, there will all of a sudden be a lot more skepticism about AI's ability to do human tasks.)
The other half of that split, the inspiring networker with amazing soft skills, who is good at driving the company culture and building relationships, would be harder to replace with an AI for the foreseeable future. Because they're not as good at it right now, and because people don't want to be led by a machine. That'll be true for a generation at least, but I imagine that could change as well. Things get normalized, and people's expectations change when their experience changes.
What Moderna just did is not what I've described above, but it does feel like a step toward it.
> I've been wondering recently when boards of directors will realize that the role of CEO might quite acceptably be split into two parts: an executive, who makes decisions to implement a high-level vision based on data and cold-blooded analysis, and (for lack of a better word) a culture head, who is the public face of the company, and keeps relationships with people, and gives inspiring speeches, and so on.
This has always been a thing. This is why Chief Product Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief of Staff, and other similar roles exist.
> The executive part, it seems to me, might quite adequately be replaced by an AI.
To understand who is going to be replaced by AI and in what order, I think you have to stop reasoning based on what is possible or effective or a good fit and just think more about the politics of power, moats, who benefits from distribution of responsibility /liability, etc.
Executives and lawyers will absolutely be the last jobs standing even if it might seem like they could be the first on the chopping block.. reverse is true for software engineers.
You just defined the role of COO at most companies. CEO has always been about sales, brand, vision, (capital raises,) etc. It's the COO who keeps the company moving.
Making decisions is the least important job of a CEO. Decisions are like ideas: cheap and plentiful.
As with ideas, what really makes a company work is execution. That takes people. Even with AI, it’s still people who are directing the AI, and connecting its work to the parts that AI can’t do yet. Which means the number one job of a CEO is recruiting, retaining, aligning, and inspiring people.
So the internal and external jobs of a CEO in 2025 are really mostly the same job: communicating a vision and getting people to execute it. It’s not that different for staff vs investors.
To be more specific, the split you propose is really like 5% / 95% in favor of the soft skills. Any decision that can be made with data and analysis is already being made one or more levels below the CEO. That shift happened years ago with the rise of ERP software.
I've been wondering recently when boards of directors will realize that the role of CEO might quite acceptably be split into two parts: an executive, who makes decisions to implement a high-level vision based on data and cold-blooded analysis, and (for lack of a better word) a culture head, who is the public face of the company, and keeps relationships with people, and gives inspiring speeches, and so on.
The executive part, it seems to me, might quite adequately be replaced by an AI. I don't even mean a hypothetical future AI, I mean literally the level of GPT models we have today. People's response to this is often "but what about genius visionaries like Steve Jobs?" and I admit that they can't be replaced. But, I'm talking about the median CEO, of the median corporation. Or even the bottom 80%, maybe. I don't think that part of their job is safe from AI in the medium term, except by gatekeeping and inertia. I firmly believe AI could do as good a job at that than most CEOs, and better than many, more cheaply, and more predictably.
(Everybody else's jobs aren't safe from AI, of course. It's just a matter of AI agents working up the ladder of complexity, from intern-level work, to junior, then senior, and so on. An important assumption here is that the executive part of being a CEO is not particularly difficult, or different from what AI has been shown to excel at already. Just that once the decision maker's job is in danger of being replaced, there will all of a sudden be a lot more skepticism about AI's ability to do human tasks.)
The other half of that split, the inspiring networker with amazing soft skills, who is good at driving the company culture and building relationships, would be harder to replace with an AI for the foreseeable future. Because they're not as good at it right now, and because people don't want to be led by a machine. That'll be true for a generation at least, but I imagine that could change as well. Things get normalized, and people's expectations change when their experience changes.
What Moderna just did is not what I've described above, but it does feel like a step toward it.