Boards of directors have critical new responsibilities in the AI era

Sundar Pichai, head of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has called the CEO role “one of the easier things” for AI to handle. Sam Altman has said he would be embarrassed if OpenAI were not the first major company to be run by an AI CEO. These are provocative statements, not only for their bold predictions about future AI capabilities but also for the assumptions they make about the nature of leadership. Ultimately, these views rest on the premise that every part of the senior leadership role can be reduced to a set of algorithmic operations. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity? ","dek":"Faisal Hoque’s books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and tech—turning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}} This idea has deep roots. Milton Friedman distilled a long-standing view of the role that a business leader should play when he argued that a busi