{"id":5458,"date":"2015-01-21T15:29:42","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T22:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5458"},"modified":"2015-01-26T22:10:43","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T05:10:43","slug":"from-davos-man-to-davos-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5458","title":{"rendered":"From Davos Man to Davos Bot?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/spacely.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5459\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/spacely.jpg?resize=500%2C255&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"spacely\" width=\"500\" height=\"255\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/spacely.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/spacely.jpg?resize=300%2C153&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In an age of robotic decision-making, are CEOs necessary? It&#8217;s a question that needs to be asked, and Frank Pasquale <a href=\"http:\/\/boundary2.org\/2015\/01\/20\/to-replace-or-respect-futurology-as-if-people-mattered\/\">is asking<\/a> it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When BART workers went on strike, Silicon Valley worthies threatened to replace them with robots. But one could just as easily call for the venture capitalists to be replaced with algorithms. Indeed, one venture capital firm\u00a0added an algorithm to its board\u00a0in 2013. Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, responded to a question on driver wage demands by bringing up the\u00a0prospect of robotic drivers. But given Uber\u2019s multiple legal and PR\u00a0fails\u00a0in 2014, a robot would probably would have done a better job running the company than Kalanick. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Thiel Fellow and computer programming prodigy Vitaly Bukherin has stated that automation of the top management functions at firms like Uber and AirBnB would be \u201ctrivially easy.\u201d\u00a0Automating the automators may sound like a fantasy, but it is a natural outgrowth of mantras\u00a0(e.g., \u201cmaximize shareholder value\u201d) that are commonplaces among the corporate elite. To attract and retain the support of investors, a firm\u00a0<em>must\u00a0<\/em>obtain certain results, and the short-run paths to attaining them (such as cutting wages, or financial engineering) are increasingly narrow.\u00a0 And in today\u2019s investment environment of rampant short-termism, the short is often the only term there is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just as the killer business app for the personal computer was the spreadsheet, so\u00a0the killer business app for artificial intelligence may turn out to\u00a0be the algorithmic\u00a0CEO. One seems to follow from the other, like an oak from an acorn. <em>The Jetsons<\/em>, you see, got it wrong:\u00a0It&#8217;s not\u00a0Rosie who turns into the robot; it&#8217;s Mr.\u00a0Spacely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an age of robotic decision-making, are CEOs necessary? It&#8217;s a question that needs to be asked, and Frank Pasquale is asking it: When BART workers went on strike, Silicon Valley worthies threatened to replace them with robots. But one could just as easily call for the venture capitalists to be replaced with algorithms. Indeed, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5458"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5492,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458\/revisions\/5492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}