Company appoints AI-powered robot Mika as CEO

[Futurism provides the link-filled report below on the appointment of a robot as CEO of the Polish company Dictador. Note the Fox Business story in which New York residents were asked for reactions. See the original Futurism story for the 2:41 minute Reuters interview with Mika (which is also available on YouTube). Design TAXI adds that “Mika’s list of accomplishments as a girl boss is only set to grow. Last month, she was named an Honorary Professor at Collegium Humanum in Warsaw, Poland, during its 2023/24 inauguration.” And Business Insider notes that “Dictador is not the first company to make a bot its CEO. Last year, a Chinese gaming firm appointed an “AI-powered virtual humanoid robot” named Tang Yu as the chief executive of a subsidiary, Fujian NetDragon Websoft“; a follow-up report notes that the company’s stock rose in the following year. –Matthew]

Company Appoints AI-Powered Robot As CEO

“I Don’t Really Have Weekends.”

By Victor Tangermann
November 6, 2023

CEObot 5000

Over the past year, we’ve all become intimately familiar with sophisticated but deeply flawed AI chatbots that can draft up a work email or high school essay with a simple prompt. Even the concept of working alongside AI algorithms seems far less far-fetched than it did just a year ago.

But what if you had to report to an AI boss instead? And what if that AI came in the form of a creepy, uncanny-looking humanoid robot CEO?

Earlier this year, Polish drinks company Dictador announced that it had anointed a robot called Mika as its “experimental CEO.”

The robot was created by Hanson Robotics, the company also behind the famed humanoid Sophia, and was hailed as the “first AI human-like robot CEO” of a global company.

“I don’t really have weekends — I’m always on 24/7, ready to make executive decisions and stir up some AI magic,” the robot told Reuters in a “video interview” at the time.

Slow Uptake

But while the rum company sees its robot as the key to its future successes, others aren’t as convinced the tech is ready for prime time just yet.

Fox Business reporter Lauren Simonetti recently interviewed Mika over a video call and found that there was a “significant delay” in the time it takes for the robot to actually respond.

Simonetti also took to the streets, asking New York City residents what they thought of the robotic CEO. While one person said they would treat it with compassion, another person argued that “robots don’t need respect” because they’re “just machines.”

If machine learning systems do keep getting stronger, though, using them in lieu of human executives might not be the farthest-fetched idea.

In a survey from earlier this year, for instance, The Hustle found that 40 percent of all respondents said it makes sense to replace CEOs with AI.

After all, they won’t think twice about dirty work like firing human employees.

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