AI and the future of leadership

Perhaps Helen was right.

Earlier today, Helen Toner officially resigned from the OpenAI board. Helen, an Australian and a University of Melbourne graduate, has been in the centre of attention in the last couple of weeks, as the OpenAI drama unfolded.

Here’s a tl;dr version, omitting a couple of key names:

OpenAI's board fires CEO Sam Altman, appoints CTO Mira Murati as his replacement. Murati considers rehiring Altman but gets replaced by Emmett Shear, former Twitch CEO. Microsoft then announces hiring Altman to lead a new AI team (sending MSFT stocks to a new high). Amidst this, dozens of OpenAI employees resign, and 745 out of 770 staff demand the board's resignation. OpenAI reinstates Altman as CEO. Old board resigns. New board being appointed.

And it all happened in just over 100 hours!

The original board had six members, two of them women. The current board has three members, all male.

Which brings me to the topic of AI and the future of leadership.

“Female AI”, “Female robot CEOs” and made-up developers

Over a year ago, in August 2022, NetDragon Websoft, a Chinese tech company, announced it had appointed an AI program (a “virtual humanoid robot”, in other words an avatar) as its “Rotating CEO”.

A bit closer to my birthplace, and about a year later, a Poland-based spirits company, Dictador Europe, appointed the first “AI human-like robot” as the CEO.

In a seemingly unrelated move, a tech conference called DevTernity, announced several speakers for its December 2023 event, including software engineers Anna Boyko and Alina Prokhoda.

Have a look at these CEOs and software engineers. What do they have in common?

None of them are women.

Tang Yu is an algorithm whose developers decided to call a “female AI”. Mika is a bunch of servos, plastic parts, and a few chips running an algorithm, covered with silicon skin, wearing a t-shirt, a wig and glasses. Anna Boyko and Alina Prokhoda? They don’t exist. They’re a product of imagination of conference organisers, trying hard to increase diversity on their speaker lists.

“Increase diversity.”

Let’s ignore for a second that these “CEOs” are not as capable as their companies claim them to be (more on it below). Let’s ignore that these “developers” don’t even exist. Both machines (an algorithm and a robot) have a visual appearance of a woman. The fake developers have names and profile pictures that make it quite clear they’re women. Is it a good step in fighting the bias that makes leadership and technology roles male-dominated? Or a massive step backwards?

I find the direction taken by these organisations perverse. There seems no inherent need to assign a gender to an algorithm or a robot. Making up speakers is wrong on so many levels that there’s no need to comment on DevTernity I’d think.. In a world that needs more human diversity in leadership and technology, this is a diversity theatre circus. I am very excited about the potential of algorithms taking on leadership roles in organisations, even if it still sounds a bit far-fetched. But anthropomorphisation of these algorithms, and assigning gender—be it male or female—to them, is not on.

Or could I be mistaken? (I might just as well be! I recently posted a set of DALL-E-generated images, an “evolution” of a Chief Digital Officer. Since the generated CDO was male, I was reminded in comments that I should do better and not perpetuate biases in Generative AI - a very fair point). Help me understand it if you think I am wrong! Hit the buttons below. Or add a comment!

Process automation ≠ Leadership

A more thorough search reveals that Ms Tang Yu is an algorithm (or a set of algorithms) that went live in 2018 at NetDragon’s “inhouse community platform” to “enable automatic processes such as task approval, notifications, rewards, promotion, etc.”

It’s fair to assume that Ms Tang Yu of 2022 is a slightly more efficient version of Ms Tang Yu of 2018. I’ve met many CEOs, and I can confidently say that task approvals, notifications, even rewards or promotions are not their typical activities. Ms. Tang Yu sounds more like an algorithmic manager than a CEO.

Curious about what happened to Ms Tang since the announcement, I checked NetDragon’s management team listing. Ms Tang Yu is not the CEO anymore. The current ‘Rotating CEO’, Liu Luyuan, is distinctively human. I guess the algorithmic CEO didn’t do too well.

Scripted conversations ≠ Leadership

Mika was built by Hanson Robotics. The same Hanson Robotics that built a robot you might have heard about, Sophia. If you haven’t heard about Sophia, all that you need to know is that pretty much every technology expert agrees that the robot is “complete bullshit” (words of Yann LeCun, one of the world’s most prominent computer scientists). The robot is often described as a basic chatbot inside a robotic body.

Mika, a “more sophisticated” version of Sophia, stated in an interview that it was “always on 24/7” and “ready to make executive decisions and stir up some AI magic”.

However, when Business Insider reached out to Dictador outside of normal working hours, they received no response.

Perhaps Mika is not allowed to check emails.

The Essence of Leadership in the AI Era

Leadership is more than task management or scripted responses. It's about vision, empathy, and decision-making – qualities yet to be replicated by any algorithm.

In our excitement to embrace AI, we mustn't lose sight of what truly makes a leader. Algorithms can enhance our capabilities, but they can't replace the human touch in leadership – intuition, ethical considerations, and emotional intelligence.

At least not just yet.

As for Anna and Alina? This has nothing to do with AI. But a lot to do with the toxic culture that scares away so many talented women, the self-proclaimed world of “brogrammers”. We need more people like Helen Toner—those who lead with integrity and have a much less narrow view of the world, compared to the “tech bros”.

We still don’t know all the details of OpenAI drama. But something’s telling me that we’ll soon find out that Helen was right.