Billionaire Jack Ma Says CEOs Could Be Robots in 30 Years, Warns of Decades of 'Pain' From AI (cnbc.com)

Self-made billionaire, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma warned on Monday that society could see decades of pain thanks to disruption caused by the internet and new technologies to different areas of the economy. From a report: In a speech at a China Entrepreneur Club event, the billionaire urged governments to bring in education reform and outlined how humans need to work with machines. "In the coming 30 years, the world's pain will be much more than happiness, because there are many more problems that we have come across," Ma said in Chinese, speaking about potential job disruptions caused by technology. [...] Ma also spoke about the rise of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) and said that this technology will be needed to process the large amount of data being generated today, something that a human brain can't do. But machines shouldn't replace what humans can do, Ma said, but instead the technology community needs to look at making machines do what humans cannot. This would make the machine a "human partner" rather than an opponent.

Comments

Re:CEO's now ...

[ranton]

If CEO's were actually replaced with robots, it would be because the "old boy's network" has been transitioned to a network of AI executives. The hardest thing to replace about executives is their existing network of contacts. Their decision making could be transitioned to machines, but they lose the ability to sidestep regulations, waiting queues, red tape, or whatever by calling their old Harvard college buddy. I work in the financial industry now, and just two weeks was in a meeting where the IRS was holding us up and we had to go to our CFO. It wasn't his knowledge which removed our problem, it was an old coworker who is now claiming we are at the top of the queue (we shall see). This happens quite frequently.

What will really make AI CEOs take over is when they start disliking working with companies not run by AI. Once they feel a meat bag cannot be trusted as a business partner, human CEOs are toast.