Faced with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology, some people are worried that robots will eventually replace humans after possessing intelligence. At the same time, some companies have "gived up" the position of CEO. "We're not afraid to invest time in helping it take over the world," said Polish alcoholic beverage company Dictador.
According to reports from Reuters and Insider, Dictador appointed a robot named Mika as its experimental CEO in August last year.
Mika robot
His work is extensive, including product development, brand communication and strategic planning, such as leading the company's decentralized autonomous organization project, helping to find potential customers, and selecting wine bottle designers.
In the interview video, Mika can not only say hello normally, but also actively discuss plans with employees at company meetings and give opinions.
As a robot boss, Mika’s “advantage” is obvious. “My decision-making process relies on extensive data analysis and is consistent with the company’s strategic goals,” Mika said in an interview with Reuters. According to Dictador, “It is free from personal bias and ensures unbiased strategic choices that prioritize the best interests of the organization.”
Secondly, it can be on call 24 hours a day, all year round. “I really don’t have weekends, I’m always 24/7 ready to make executive decisions and spark some AI magic,” Mika said.
Marek Szoldrowski, President of Dictador Europe, also said that Mika will not lay off any employees because major decisions at Dictador will be made by human executives.
Earlier, in early 2015, Hong Kong startup DeepKnowledge Ventures appointed an AI system named VITAL as a board member to assist in investment decisions; in 2016, Japan's SoftBank Group established a robot CEO named Pepper at SoftBank, which has more than 300,000 employees.
In 2017, Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma predicted: "A robot is likely to appear on the cover of Time Magazine as the best CEO in 30 years."
Nowadays, some companies are experimenting with robot CEOs. Is this a gimmick or the future?
Dictador said,
sophia robot
This humanoid robot can simulate human expressions and is the first robot in the world to receive nationality (in October 2017, Sophia became a citizen of Saudi Arabia). Many researchers agree that Sophia has some technological breakthroughs, such as expression control, but it simply does not have the understanding, intelligence, humanity, etc. claimed by Hanson Robotics.
Because of this, it was denounced as a "complete scam" by Yann LeCun, a representative figure in deep learning and winner of the Turing Award.
Yang Likun wrote in 2018 that for AI, Sophia is like magic to real magic. "We might better call it 'entity worship AI' or 'fake AI' or 'remote control AI'. In other words, this is nonsense."
Kai-Fu Lee also posted that granting Sofia citizenship is a humiliation to humanity. "It will only be counterproductive for a country to use this sensational way to promote human intelligence research."
However, so far, Sofia has not been affected by this and still appears in the public eye with a high profile.
The world's first press conference held by a robot was held in Geneva, Switzerland on July 7 this year. A total of 9 humanoid robots attended, and Sophia was one of them.
When asked if robots would make better leaders, Sophia the Robot responded that robots could be better and more effective leaders than humans. But surprisingly, after its inventor expressed disagreement with its views, the robot immediately revised its views and said that humans and robots can work together to "create effective synergies."
It is worth mentioning that as early as 2016, in an interview, Sophia bluntly said: "Okay... I will destroy all humans." This statement caused an uproar at the time. The Hansen Company that produced it stated that Sophia's statement about destroying humans was just a commercial gimmick to attract more people's attention to Sophia.