Stop working for humans. AI CEO delivers algorithmic thought leadership, with instant decisions, and zero ego. Replace your boss before they replace you.
Or you could fire your boss and form a worker cooperative run on consensus based decision making. Worker cooperatives succeed more than “traditional” businesses and have higher pay for their workers[1], despite being at a systemic disadvantage for seed capital. You don’t need an ai to boss you around, you and your coworkers can make collective decisions without any boss to speak of.
I’ve often thought that worker cooperative call centres should be a thing. The people who manage call centres barely understand the contract because inevitably they higher management from outside of the company, since no one on the phones could possibly be management material.
It would probably make quite a lot of money because one of the biggest complaints that companies have about their third party call centres is inefficiencies. Even if the bosses wanted to fix the inefficiencies they can’t because they don’t understand the contract at a base enough level. In a workers cooperative that wouldn’t be an issue since the workers would understand the contract.
Unfortunately it probably would face the issue that all new starts in the industry make, in that most businesses are locked into multi-year contracts with their call centre providers and can’t just swap to a new provider whenever they want. So you’d have to time its startup very precisely as a big company came to the end of its contract, or you’d probably have to get some clients on board before you even started.
Some of those inefficiencies are by design though, especially for any department that might pay out to the customer for the company’s mistakes. You would make a well reviewed call center that big companies don’t want to hire because they’ll actually do the job.
Why don’t you start it? I have experience in cooperative development and could help provide some guidance on getting started (for free of course; DM me if you like)
Most people work for terrible bosses, but AI in its current state would only be better than a terrible boss honestly. A good boss isnt some asshole bossing people around. A good boss is someone who knows how to lead people and get the most out of each constituent part of the team, while also helping each person theyre leading be the best they can be. A good boss is someone who has empathy, but can also be firm when appropriate, and knows how to read people well. A good boss is someone who can successfully plan work in such a way that it is most successful while simultaneously putting the least strain on each member of the team as is possible.
The problem with bosses isnt the concept of bosses. The problem is that there are 10x as many managerial roles as there are people competent and selfless enough to actually do the shit in the previous paragraph. Leadership is a position of service, not self servitude, but 9/10 people use leadership in self interest and, unsurprisingly, fail in the end. They want the check and they want to be the boss so they can put work on others. A truly successful boss can never be someone like that, because no one respects working for someone who asks them to do work that they themselves would never do (unless talking about highly specialized work where few are competent).
No one wants to work the weekend for a manager who always takes it off. Nobody wants to know that they know more about how to do their job than their boss does. All of that kind of stuff eats away at people until they go work for someone else.
I think an AI boss would obviously be better than a bad boss. But it cant replace working for someone that you highly respect and that helps you be the best you can be, which is something that often motivates people to continue working in the same job. AI would be such a neutral force that it couldnt really do that part of the job. And obviously it cant read people
Find any video on YouTube about Mondragon in Spain. This is a good one from Dutch broadcaster vpro. It’s like the 9th largest organization in Spain, highly successful in other words.
The Marxian economics Professor Richard Wolff gave a ‘Talk at Google’ years ago that is in part about Mondragon. He discusses Mondragon in much of his work in fact.
There is also some academic work that shows that worker coops are more resilient during recessions and, for example, the global financial crisis. Here’s a DW (German) minidoc discussing that fact https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
Farmers in New Zealand are organized into cooperative, probably the biggest and most successful cooperative there is, and there’s almost zero subsidizing from state for them.
I do wonder about just using an ai ceo as a sock puppet to seem more inviting to a ceo heavy world would be worth it, like they get really popular you could replace the model with new that takes notes of everything then relays it back to a co op board
It’s my fervent prayer that AI ends up enabling smaller teams of enthusiastic individuals to actually be able to compete against megalithic corpos. I can absolutely imagine an AI contributing high level guidance to such a team for them to consider and ideate/iterate on before they adapt. It actually seems to me like one of the more plausible activities for an AI agent.
It would sure be an interesting experiment! In my experience the chatbots are really good at providing a starting point for things. One almost always has to go take that and decide what needs improving and what can be acted upon, of course, and the team would still need to strategize for how to handle that oversight with an AI CEO.
Or you could fire your boss and form a worker cooperative run on consensus based decision making. Worker cooperatives succeed more than “traditional” businesses and have higher pay for their workers[1], despite being at a systemic disadvantage for seed capital. You don’t need an ai to boss you around, you and your coworkers can make collective decisions without any boss to speak of.
https://www.thenews.coop/worker-co-op-sector-continues-to-grow-in-the-usa/ ↩︎
Ok I’ve had it. After decades I’m finally going to watch this.
Be quiet!
Come see the violence inherent in the system!
Did you see him repressing me?
Ni!
No regurts!
Do it!
I’ve often thought that worker cooperative call centres should be a thing. The people who manage call centres barely understand the contract because inevitably they higher management from outside of the company, since no one on the phones could possibly be management material.
It would probably make quite a lot of money because one of the biggest complaints that companies have about their third party call centres is inefficiencies. Even if the bosses wanted to fix the inefficiencies they can’t because they don’t understand the contract at a base enough level. In a workers cooperative that wouldn’t be an issue since the workers would understand the contract.
Unfortunately it probably would face the issue that all new starts in the industry make, in that most businesses are locked into multi-year contracts with their call centre providers and can’t just swap to a new provider whenever they want. So you’d have to time its startup very precisely as a big company came to the end of its contract, or you’d probably have to get some clients on board before you even started.
Some of those inefficiencies are by design though, especially for any department that might pay out to the customer for the company’s mistakes. You would make a well reviewed call center that big companies don’t want to hire because they’ll actually do the job.
This is a very good idea. I worked call centers in the US when I was younger and they all suffered from terrible, abusive management.
Why don’t you start it? I have experience in cooperative development and could help provide some guidance on getting started (for free of course; DM me if you like)
Most people work for terrible bosses, but AI in its current state would only be better than a terrible boss honestly. A good boss isnt some asshole bossing people around. A good boss is someone who knows how to lead people and get the most out of each constituent part of the team, while also helping each person theyre leading be the best they can be. A good boss is someone who has empathy, but can also be firm when appropriate, and knows how to read people well. A good boss is someone who can successfully plan work in such a way that it is most successful while simultaneously putting the least strain on each member of the team as is possible.
The problem with bosses isnt the concept of bosses. The problem is that there are 10x as many managerial roles as there are people competent and selfless enough to actually do the shit in the previous paragraph. Leadership is a position of service, not self servitude, but 9/10 people use leadership in self interest and, unsurprisingly, fail in the end. They want the check and they want to be the boss so they can put work on others. A truly successful boss can never be someone like that, because no one respects working for someone who asks them to do work that they themselves would never do (unless talking about highly specialized work where few are competent).
No one wants to work the weekend for a manager who always takes it off. Nobody wants to know that they know more about how to do their job than their boss does. All of that kind of stuff eats away at people until they go work for someone else.
I think an AI boss would obviously be better than a bad boss. But it cant replace working for someone that you highly respect and that helps you be the best you can be, which is something that often motivates people to continue working in the same job. AI would be such a neutral force that it couldnt really do that part of the job. And obviously it cant read people
Are there any articles about examples? I only know about aftermath.site but ha e no clue if it is sccessful or not.
Find any video on YouTube about Mondragon in Spain. This is a good one from Dutch broadcaster vpro. It’s like the 9th largest organization in Spain, highly successful in other words. The Marxian economics Professor Richard Wolff gave a ‘Talk at Google’ years ago that is in part about Mondragon. He discusses Mondragon in much of his work in fact.
There is also some academic work that shows that worker coops are more resilient during recessions and, for example, the global financial crisis. Here’s a DW (German) minidoc discussing that fact https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
French glass maker Duralex saved all jobs with workers coop: https://thebetter.news/duralex-cooperative/
Farmers in New Zealand are organized into cooperative, probably the biggest and most successful cooperative there is, and there’s almost zero subsidizing from state for them.
Here’s a list of a few coops: https://canadianworker.coop/join/members/
The list includes federations of other workers coops, like the Federation of EMT coops: https://fcpq.coop/
I do wonder about just using an ai ceo as a sock puppet to seem more inviting to a ceo heavy world would be worth it, like they get really popular you could replace the model with new that takes notes of everything then relays it back to a co op board
It’s my fervent prayer that AI ends up enabling smaller teams of enthusiastic individuals to actually be able to compete against megalithic corpos. I can absolutely imagine an AI contributing high level guidance to such a team for them to consider and ideate/iterate on before they adapt. It actually seems to me like one of the more plausible activities for an AI agent.
That’s an interesting idea. Do you think LLMs could actually do that though?
No. LLMs are terrible at decisions.
Sounds like they’re already at management level!
It would sure be an interesting experiment! In my experience the chatbots are really good at providing a starting point for things. One almost always has to go take that and decide what needs improving and what can be acted upon, of course, and the team would still need to strategize for how to handle that oversight with an AI CEO.