A Plea To Rethink The Chief AI Officer

The hottest job of 2024 is—without question—the Chief AI Officer (CAIO). From technology companies to healthcare providers to colleges and universities, organizations are hiring CAIOs left and right. In March, the White House went so far as to announce that federal agencies were required to designate Chief AI Officers “to ensure accountability, leadership and oversight” of the technology, spurring a wave of government hires. 

This trend is unsurprising given AI’s rapid rise. In fact, it reflects an instinct and reaction that’s highly prevalent in institutions of all kinds despite its potential to limit effectiveness and competitiveness.

When confronted with promising and emerging areas—like AI—too many organizations simply create a new high-level position and then return to business as usual. This quick fix is frequently the embodiment of corporate window dressing, a signal that a company is keeping up with the latest developments with no actual evolution, integration or lasting business impact.

I like to call these reactions and initiatives “Drug Store Cowboys”—all hat and no cattle. Like a guy who got his Stetson at CVS and has never been to the rodeo.

In this context, companies greenlighting “all hat, no cattle” CAIO hires are making moves that are unlikely to turn out well. 

To illustrate, consider how the business world reacted when Amazon took off, making the transition from book store to everything store. In response to the company’s famous “customer obsession,” more enterprises began adding Chief Customer Officers, designating ownership of the CX or customer experience. 

Big picture, this move hasn’t paid off—namely because many CCOs are mere figureheads. With no real power or influence, they haven’t been able to truly make customers the ultimate priority. What’s more, their role often serves to limit or minimize the CX responsibilities of other leaders.

Such thinking is not just theoretical. Research indicates that companies in which CEOs assume responsibility for CX are more likely to be strongly profitable.

Also, for further context, every Amazon team member shoulders the weight of the customer experience. From the C-Suite to the delivery drivers, excelling at CX is part of the job.

CEOs—are you getting the message? As chief executives, you should be taking responsibility for your enterprises’ AI agenda and strategy. From there, the impetus is to make AI visioning and adoption key for every leader’s job while looking at high-impact, high-potential scenarios and opportunities. These are big bets and require thoughtful, proven strategies. For example:

• Don’t rush to hire a CAIO. Instead, consider seeking out AI expertise to inform multidisciplinary teams of empowered stakeholders. These units should be tasked with exploring and operationalizing ways in which AI can help run businesses better now and creating the conditions that will quickly determine how to run the businesses of tomorrow. 
  
• Cultivate AI partnerships, not gatekeepers. Teams charged with investigating AI must reflect those who have control over the velocity of the initiative. Bringing this mix of professionals together and infusing a mindset that the organization’s AI success is their primary objective will encourage them to collaborate, sharing ownership and responsibility, instead of getting in each other’s way.
  
• Establish an alternate digital universe. Separate environments that mirror the key data, schematics and rules of legacy systems allow teams to rapidly prototype, experiment, test and review new AI integrations and solutions while simultaneously maintaining the stability of their organizations’ day-to-day operations. 

This work begins with overcoming the misperception that AI expertise is the critical skill required to make impact when in fact expertise needs to extend to imagination, innovation, storytelling and building broad partnerships to drive change and build capabilities specific to AI.

Companies that go this route will be those that are first to unearth the substantial transformational promise of AI, becoming the next generation of standard bearers and setting an example for others to follow.