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Among the main concerns as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced is whether the technology has the power to getting jobs. A CEO strongly believes that AI does not only have the power to perform menial or repetitive tasksbut also has the wisdom and reasoning to take his own job as chief executive of a multibillion-dollar company.
Sebastian SiemiatkowskiCEO of the buy-now, pay-later platform Klarnasays AI’s reasoning capabilities make that possible.
“For me AI can do all our jobs, myself included,” Siemiatkowski said in a post on X earlier this year. “Because our job is simply reasoning combined with knowledge/experience. And the most critical breakdown, reasoning, is behind us.”
I realize that my statements about “AI will do all our jobs” cause a danger.
So let me explain and expand on what I mean.
In my opinion the major breakthrough in AI is a computer with “reasoning” capabilities. This has basically been achieved.
Not if you show AI…— Sebastian Siemiatkowski (@klarnaseb) January 6, 2025
While Siemiatkowski said AI could perform his duties as CEO, he is “not too excited” about the prospect of his job becoming obsolete.
“My work for me is a very important part of who I am, and realizing that it might not be necessary is sad,” Siemiatkowski said in X post. “But I also believe that we have to be honest with what we think is going to happen.
Klarna refused luckThis is a request for further comment.
A 2023 survey by online education company edX confirms some CEOs believe that AI can replace their jobs. Almost half of the CEOs who responded said they believe “most” or “all” of their work should be fully automated or replaced by AI.
Siemiatkowski is very confident in his company’s AI capabilities stopped hiring over a year ago. Now AI is doing the work of hundreds of employees across the company. The Stockholm-based company’s headcount fell 22% to 3,500 last year, mostly due to attrition, Siemiatkowski said. Bloomberg last December. The BNPL company earlier this year had about 200 people using AI to do their core work, he told Bloomberg. Klarna is now appreciated around $14 billion.
Siemiatkowski said, however, that some Klarna employees are “rallying” to deploy as much AI as they can—mostly to earn more money in their paychecks.
“We will provide some of the improvements that AI provides by increasing the pace of salary increases for our employees,” Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg.
Can AI really take over C-suite positions?
Siemiatkowski says that AI’s massive knowledge base, combined with reasoning abilitiesmeaning technology can make decisions for a company.
Honu, a technology company that builds a decision infrastructure on which to run AI agents, argues similarly. Imad Riachifounder and CEO of tortoiseSPOKE luck AI is becoming so sophisticated that its complex reasoning is rapidly becoming faster than the human brain. This means AI will soon be able to evaluate corporate performance, analyze millions of real-world scenarios, determine business direction, and implement strategy in a fraction of the time it takes for humans to do the same, he said.
“This is a time of awakening for CEOs, their board, and top-level management for existing businesses and future corporate founders,” said Riachi, a former. Meta and Goldman Sachs executive. “The unprecedented scope of AI’s decision-making powers demands that executives hold a deeper understanding of its capabilities.”
Some AI leaders aren’t yet too concerned about the technology’s capabilities to take executive-level jobs.
“The idea of AI performing every human job, including that of a CEO, still remains more speculative than realistic at this point,” said Akash Nigam, CEO of the AI avatar company. Geniesthat received $250 million in funding from Disney CEO Bob Iger.
While AI has made “tremendous strides” in analyzing data, competing workloads, and creating content, the “CEO role requires not only strategic thinking but perhaps more importantly, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and nuanced leadership—qualities that AI cannot fully replicate more,” Nigam said luck.
A version of this story was published by Fortune.com on January 6, 2025.
