3 Possible Futures for AI in Business
We're approaching a critical moment in how artificial intelligence will impact business leadership. At Convictional, we're focused on what we consider the final frontier of business software: supporting executive decision-making, particularly for CEOs. Through this work, we've identified three distinct futures for business leadership in the age of AI.
- AI Completely Replaces Human CEOs
- Human CEOs Work in Partnership with AI
- CEO Leadership Continues Without AI Augmentation
The first scenario - AI replacement - is fundamentally flawed. Business leadership operates in a ‘harsh environment’ - a context where key variables are outside your direct control and where human factors are essentially important. The legal frameworks governing corporate conduct were built around human judgment and accountability. Pure AI leadership would risk undermining these guardrails.
The third scenario - continuing without AI augmentation - will quickly become obsolete. The CEO role faces unique challenges that make it particularly suited for AI augmentation:
- CEOs often make decisions affecting areas where they lack deep expertise
- They need to process vast amounts of contextual information across multiple business functions
- They're required to make or endorse predictions about complex future outcomes with limited information
In fact, we're already seeing evidence that AI can outperform humans in many of these discrete tasks. At Convictional, approximately 80% of the decision-making criteria in our software now comes from AI-generated insights. The ability of AI to brainstorm options that help attain business goals is often more creative and comprehensive than human users.
This brings us to human-AI partnership. We believe this is not just the most desirable future, but the only viable one as AI capabilities begin to overtake human cognitive abilities in specific domains.
We believe AI should be empowered to:
- Build comprehensive context across business functions
- Perform deep analysis of complex situations
- Generate and evaluate potential options
- Make sophisticated predictions about outcomes
- Identify patterns and relationships humans might miss
And perform those roles with increasing autonomy. However, we also believe AI should not:
- Make final judgments between options
- Hold legal liability for decisions
- Replace human accountability in corporate governance
Today's CEO relies on an executive team because no single person can be an expert in everything. Your CFO understands finance better than you do. Your CTO knows technology better than you do. AI can serve as an additional member of this team - one with unprecedented analytical capabilities - while leaving final judgment in human hands. That is what we are building.
The question of AI's role in corporate leadership isn't merely theoretical - it's a practical challenge that needs solving now. Just as having a human pilot provides confidence in commercial aviation despite advanced autopilot systems, having human executives who can be held accountable provides essential safeguards for the way companies operate.
This isn't just about better business outcomes - it's about ensuring that as AI reshapes the business landscape, we maintain the human wisdom, accountability, and judgment that have always been at the heart of successful leadership.
If you share our vision for this future, I’d like to meet and share what we’ve been working on. Whether you're interested in becoming a customer or joining our team, reach out to me at roger@convictional.com.