Tag: artificial-intelligence

The End of the Corporate CEO!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

CEO’s will soon be gone. And when they are, it will be much better world and a much better economy.

When these preening fools with their enormous salaries, portfolio of stocks and out sized political power disappear, no one will lament and no one will care.

And right now they are firing people and replacing them with AI. They are so happy about it, talking about more profits and not having to deal with ungrateful and troublesome workers. You might think that they are acting like unfeeling and inhuman machines. And you would be right.

Over and over again, you see in the business press the worship of the cutthroat CEO putting the hammer down on the workers. You get the impression that they want a man who is completely free of the normal limitations on greed and wrong doing. They don’t look for Christians. They don’t look for human qualities like love, kindness and understanding. And above all a reverence for nation or an obedience to the law is a red line to be avoided.

So, what do stockholders and boards of directors want? They want a man shorn of human emotion.

However, they are often bitterly disappointed. Even the cold blooded specimens of humanity they can find sometimes slip. It is deeply regrettable. He might develop a love for a child. He might wander accidentally into a church. There is no telling what traps of morality, religion or family can do to even the best cold blooded psychopath.

At the moment, they are happily firing and destroying the human beings that get in the way of their vision. Don’t believe me??

How about this little story:

https://fortune.com/2025/08/17/ceo-laid-off-80-percent-workforce-ai-sabotage/

Eric Vaughan, CEO of enterprise-software powerhouse IgniteTech, is unwavering as he reflects on the most radical decision of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced that generative AI was an “existential” transformation, Vaughan looked at his team and saw a workforce not fully on board. His ultimate response: He ripped the company down to the studs, replacing nearly 80% of staffwithin a year, according to headcount figures reviewed by Fortune.

Over the course of 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024, Vaughan said IgniteTech replaced hundreds of employees, declining to disclose a specific number. “That was not our goal,” he told Fortune. “It was extremely difficult … But changing minds was harder than adding skills.” It was, by any measure, a brutal reckoning—but Vaughan insists it was necessary, and says he’d do it again.

He got rid of eighty percent! Now, that is cold blooded! And he is so proud telling the press the he’d do it again and talking about his former employees as if they were some kind of disobedient pets! What a guy! The ideal CEO! Got a conscience, hell no, screw that! Ice water for blood.

Now of course, there has to be a down side. Carping critics like me. I, a pitiful liberal, with my weird and out of date beliefs in the sanctity of the law, Christian obligations devised and stated clearly by Jesus Christ and a devotion to the ideals of the United States. Those beliefs lead me to believe that this CEO is doomed to Hell where many others like him dwell.

But as these CEO’s fire and proclaim their delight in cruelty, they don’t realize the bitter irony.

Let me tell you a story. There was once an episode of the Twilight Zone called “The Brain Center at Whipple’s.”

Let me Quote that master of television writing, Rod Serling’s intro:

These are the players — with or without a scorecard. In one corner a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man’s brain. We don’t make book on this one and predict no winner….but we can tell you for this particular contest, there is standing room only — in the Twilight Zone.

This passage is from my dear friends at Wikipeda, specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Center_at_Whipple%27s

In the story, a company manager replaces all the workers with machines and then is replaced by a machine himself. and this fictional and cautionary event is about to happen in real life.

(Film screen-shot of 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Intended to support film’s plot description. I include this picture because in the Twighlight episode discussed above, our friend robbie here was the one who replaced the boss – but he was uncredited, the fate of the robot.)

In an article written by Emma Burleigh in Fortune, Google X’s former chief business officer Mo Gawdat is quoted in the following article.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ai-gutting-workforces-ex-google-150148959.html

But executives shouldn’t celebrate their efficiency gains too soon—their role is also on the chopping block, Gawdat, who worked in tech for 30 years and now writes books on AI development, cautioned.

“CEOs are celebrating that they can now get rid of people and have productivity gains and cost reductions because AI can do that job. The one thing they don’t think of is AI will replace them too,” Gawdat continued. “AGI is going to be better at everything than humans, including being a CEO. You really have to imagine that there will be a time where most incompetent CEOs will be replaced.”

“Better at everything than humans, including being a CEO.” I love the irony and have a certain sense that this is finally real justice at these self-proclaimed masters of the economy.

But you say, “Stop James, that is merely one voice among many. I’m sure it is not true.”

Don’t be quite so sure, I have some other sources.

How about this one:

From by Hamza Mudassir, Kamal Munir, Shaz Ansari and Amal Zahra writing in the Harvard Business Review.

https://hbr.org/2024/09/ai-can-mostly-outperform-human-ceos

Or this article written byFrank Landymore for The Byte:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceos-easily-replaced-with-ai

CEOs better start endearing themselves to their employees real quick, because oh boy: the case for replacing them with AI just keeps mounting.

And then there is this article from Forbes –

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sherzododilov/2024/01/11/can-ai-become-your-next-ceo/

And this article from Inc – EXPERT OPINION BY JOE PROCOPIO.

Let me add here just above the link that this is a very delightfully written article. You should read the whole thing. This guy is just a great writer. jp

https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/it-wont-be-long-before-ai-replaces-the-ceos/91194705

Corporate and unicorn CEOs have never had a stellar reputation. These aren’t men and women of the people by nature. But over the last 10 or so years, the CEO role has been further marred by alleged thieves (FTX), alleged liars (Theranos), and alleged cults of personality (WeWork), among many, many more problematic abuses of the position. 

So, in my opinion, the days of the CEO are numbered. It probably should have happened a long time ago.

James Alan Pilant

Writing about Business Ethics!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Since I have returned to writing regularly on my business ethics site, it is important to reflect on what has changed since I first began this project.

I started this blog in 2006 and often published several times a day. I was very enthusiastic. Each morning I would go over the major news sites carefully reading their “Business” sections (sometimes the sites called it “Money” or some other euphemism) and there were always one of two things worthy of a business ethics writer’s attention.

Well, now it is 2025 and we are just at the end of first six months of this lawless administration. I went through the news and came up with 25 solid business ethics topics to discuss — and that is when I stopped counting. The regular business ethics issues I saw when I began have been replaced by a flood of business ethics failures and obscenities. One day’s news output could keep a man writing for weeks.

Wanton, incompetent and often downright evil behavior is a constant in the news, in particular when discussing the actions of our current President. But many business leaders, the wealthy and other politicians have leaped on the immorality bandwagon. Never before in American history has being cruel, self serving and vile been so celebrated and publicized. I never thought to live to see such times and it is painful to see such evil and so little push back.

Let me give you an example. And I didn’t have to look for an example, it was on today’s news.

Stupid and Immoral — And Proud of it!

Take a look at the article linked to below. This CEO’s hatred and disdain for human beings who I might add he is paid to lead and manage is self evident. He is outwardly, nakedly and proudly empty of moral values and human decency. Not to mention, astonishingly unaware, for if AI makes workers obsolete, it does the same for CEO’s. I promise that while I weep for the suffering of workers, I will celebrate with good food and friends every CEO replaced by a machine.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ceo-brags-that-he-gets-extremely-excited-firing-people-and-replacing-them-with-ai/ar-AA1JsRr4

“CEOs are extremely excited about the opportunities that AI brings,” Elijah Clark, a chief executive who advises other head honchos on using AI at their companies, told Gizmodo in an interview. “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI.”

“AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise,” he added, parroting cliched talking points, much like a certain over-hyped technology. “These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”

I used to teach in a business college of the type that this cretin almost certainly graduated from one does not fill me with pride. We should have done better with our students than turning out morally challenged money-grubbers. I certainly tried and many faculty I knew also tried hard to give some semblance of moral, ethical and traditionally American values teaching but we were up against the corruption and evil of our current business and political leadership. All the money and power now seems to go to the psychopath and the sycophants. It is not an edifying spectacle.

It may be in a few years that we will once again live in a democracy that this proto-fascist feast of the gluttonous pigs will be over. Be we may very well lose this and all the things a whole human being should hold dear will pass away to subsumed in a morass of greed and self interest.

We’re going to find out.

James Alan Pilant

A Basic Business Ethics Failure

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://www.yahoo.com/news/78-old-employee-fired-age-163333950.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/finance/news/employer-fired-78-old-must-182621742.html

Let’s start with the facts of the matters as explained in the top article above:

On Feb. 10, 2022, the woman was hospitalized after experiencing high blood pressure at work, according to the lawsuit. When she returned to her office, she noticed a new employee, who was about 30 years younger, sitting at her desk, the lawsuit says. That day, the woman met with the general manager, who questioned her about how long she planned to work for the company, according to the suit. “Where do you see yourself? Do you need to keep working? Don’t you want to travel? See your brother?” are questions the manager is accused of asking her, the lawsuit says. The woman made it clear she wanted to continue working for two or three more years, according to the EEOC.

The resolution of the case, again from the article above:

Now Covenant Woods has agreed to settle the lawsuit for $78,000, the EEOC, the federal agency in charge of protecting workers against discrimination, announced in an April 30 news release. Covenant Woods is to pay the woman the amount in full, according to a consent decree filed April 29. She will receive $50,000 for compensatory damages and $28,000 for wages.

When I was teaching, I often got a very fine question from my students about these matters. Since, you can fire anyone for any cause, how does a business get caught for discrimination? It’s very simple, they explain it to the victim and the world. I have literally seen cases where people were fired and the business in question sent them a letter explaining that they were being fired for being old. (And then I would explain how businesses very often think they know the law when they clearly don’t.)

The business here didn’t leave us in much doubt as to their motives. I have to admire them for the cold blooded villainy with which the whole matter was executed.

This is one of the standard business ethics things we see over and over again. I don’t think it is as common as being fired for getting pregnant (You are not supposed to fire women for getting pregnant either.) but it is right up there.

Why do business owners keep doing stupid stuff like this? It’s very simple. Our society doesn’t place much value on age and experience — and so they feel safe in exercising that prejudice.

Do they realize they’re being stupid? No, generally stupid, incompetent and greedy people are the very last people to realize their inherent bad qualities. And since they are invoking the values, the corrupt and foolish values – mind you, of the larger society, they think they are just making your average “American” decisions.

Here is what should be done.

We need to change the way we educate business majors. Currently we teach them the current beliefs in the field of business largely unvarnished by research. So, we get a whole bunch of people with little real education in any of the human endeavors that make whole human beings. Specifically there should be a Business Law II course which goes into more depth about our laws and society.

We should teach a business profession imbued with human values and ethics. We should teach a business regime where businesses form a partnership, a symbiosis, with our greater society, participants in the health and welfare of the people of the nation.

What we get now in many cases are morally blank pursuers of cash at all costs and over any obstacle. Now, some would deny this – they are wrong – and I know they are wrong because I taught in a business department and running across a student whose one abiding desire was to make a ton of money legally or otherwise was a regular event.

Let’s create a new crop of businessman fit to live among us in a democratic society based on law and ethical virtue.

It is the very least a morally responsible teaching profession should do.

James Pilant