The rise of the Chief AI Officer is incredibly fascinating to me. It's this new role where someone is hired to specifically keep up with everything happening in AI and implement it into certain operations within the company. For example, this person might: - Find a ChatGPT prompt that makes the Finance team work 10% faster - Get the Marketing team using Midjourney to work 25% faster - Implement AI tools to streamline HR processes and save teams hours a day Every major org is hiring one. Just recently, NASA, Dell, LVMH, Morgan Stanley, and the Dubai government hired 22. Why? The potential impact of having someone increase the efficiency of an entire department by 10% is pretty unheard of, but totally possible now. It also makes sure the org is thinking AI-first into the future and doesn't fall behind. Everyone talks about AI not just taking jobs, but creating new ones, and this is a perfect example of a role we'll see a whole lot more of. But that leads me to a couple of unanswered questions (that many orgs likely struggle with too): - How does an org find someone to do this role? - Do they need a technical background, or do they just need to know how to deploy new AI tools effectively? - Are there any education platforms building certifications for CIAOs? If you recently were hired as a Chief AI Officer or a similar role, I'd LOVE to ask you a few questions. It can be completely anonymous, and I'll pay for your time. Please send me a DM or email me rowan@therundown(dot)ai
Hey Rowan, I'm a mentor for postgraduate studies for certified AI consultants. Some of my mentees became Head of AI or CAIO
Alternatively, one can read the same article this screenshot came from. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-names-first-chief-artificial-intelligence-officer/ "NASA continues developing recommendations on leveraging emerging AI technology to best serve our goals and missions, from sifting through Earth science imagery to identifying areas of interest, to searching for data on planets outside our solar system from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduling communications from the Perseverance Mars rover through the Deep Space Network, and more." But wild speculation that fits the hype cycle is good enough to lock down that engagement, I suppose. If I may speculate too, I think NASA has a bit more ambition for their use of AI than generating marketing copy with LLMs.
This is businesses reaction to change, very much like hiring a chief digital officer. Now big business thinks they need a PHD academic in Data science and ML, when what the role involves is a rethink of how we work, solve problems across the business, rally a new culture of AI thinking, upskilling teams to solve problems with the tech. Very much like a Chief Digital Officer did. Let's let the seriously talented PHD academic do what they do best, research at the cutting edge of this field, develop incredible models, refine complex infrastructure, etc. This is a clear indicator of businesses panicking and hiring some brilliant minds to do a politicians role of getting corporate buy in, manage shifts in governance and procedure, drive new cultures and developing people at different stages of maturity. This is thinking that, spending a fortune on a rolls Royce of a solution, is the way forward, however no one has understood the problem that needs to be solved ! My 2 cents 🤷
Role will be convoluted for a while as the CDO role has been. As someone who operated as Head of AI building two practices from the ground up, the role will certainly need to be a mixture of strategic prowess, subject matter expertise, value and ROI creation, evangelization, education, change management, market/sales/product enablement... all while being dangerous enough to stay ahead of the curve of technology and AI methodologies yo be relevant. Those roles, coincidentally, were easier to create system wide change compared to some of my CDO roles.
To be successful in this role takes political savvy, the ability to plan strategically and align and execute initiatives, excellent communication skills, and the emotional intelligence to be able to manage and motivate teams during times of unprecedented change. What makes this role different is that this person also needs a deep understanding of programming, development, and the ever evolving capabilities of AI. This is critical to allow the CAIO to communicate and translate between those with the vision, who sometimes don't have a clear understanding of the possibilities and limitations of technology, and to technical teams who will develop/refine AI tools to meet organizational goals. I have been searching for a program that teaches the technical aspects without having to go through a 4 year program and have not found anything that fits. I am now in a AI and ML Associates program at my local community college, which is a collaboration with Intel. It's not a perfect fit to fill the technical proficiency, but it's the closest I've found to what I need.
Make sense! With so much data being collected from various sources, having programs that can quickly sort through and analyze it all would be incredibly helpful.
You forgot to ask the most important question - who will be testing the prompt? They need to understand and mitigate the risks associated with hallucinations, incorrect calculations (in finance), displaying incorrect employee policy (in HR) and just about anything that may be affected. If the role of this person is "find and implement" - but not be responsible for consequences, then it seems to me an organization makes a reckless decision in appointing that person.
My hunch is that C-AI-Os are going to be vastly underwater in minutes of taking the role. AI is too broad and fast moving a space, the disruption is horizontal (affecting all teams in the business), and the real benefits will come from deeply integrating AI into core business processes and to Heidi Araya's point: finding the interactions between teams. To me, like CDOs before this, it's a role solution when the problem is process and systems.
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3wI've spoken to a bunch of Chief AI Officers. It's not a tech role, it's about evangelization, leadership and bringing teams together. Needs to be a crucial role going forward.