# So what will our AI civilization of the future look like?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973
**Category:** Great Debates
**Tags:** ai
**Created:** [September 10, 2026, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973 "2026-09-10T20:09:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/81 "2026-09-25T01:18:31Z")
I will start worrying when AI takes the job of a tech CEO. I figure if that’s not possible, then neither is most of the doom saying.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/82 "2026-09-25T13:35:32Z")
Related thread.
> [@Measuring productivity for cognitive work](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/measuring-productivity-for-cognitive-work/1033372):
>
> Subject inspired by discussion in several threads about AI but not necessarily about AI. It also is a question about how cognitive work productivity is measured, how it actually makes sense measure it, and how productivity and compensation interact, or do not. Some is just factual questioning - getting some with the chops of understanding economics to clearly explain how productivity is measured for cognitive services. And then, since that is likely GDP based, if that adequately captures produc…
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/83 "2026-09-25T14:25:35Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#):
>
> I will start worrying when AI takes the job of a tech CEO. I figure if that’s not possible, then neither is most of the doom saying.
Research indicates that people generally think that everyone else’s job is in danger of AI but their job is special and can only be done by a human. That’s because people have a very dim view about what other people do and underestimate the complexity of others’ work. And I know this must apply to business leaders as well.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/84 "2026-09-25T15:24:26Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> Exactly. My observation is that many if most execs have a very simplistic version of what their employees do, and they manage by headcount, not by skills.
> Example that I’ve shared before: My daughter worked for an airline in Hong Kong. They wanted to get rid of all the non-Chinese employees. Unfortunately for them, one of these people was responsible for renewing a certificate in the US they needed for their website. Since he got forced out, he never explained the stuff he did that was nonstandard. The certificate went out and their site went down - right before the time they were having a big sale for Golden week or something, when they made a lot of their profit.
> Oops.
> Would an AI know to to this? Unlikely.
[Chesterton’s Fence](https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/) Don’t tear something down until you figure out why it was built in the first place.
I would say that’s more of an operational failure than a bad management decision. In my line of work, we try to reduce “shadow IT” as much as possible for the very reason you describe. It creates a huge operational and security risk having these little band aid fixes that actually become a load bearing structure holding the roof up.
My observation is that many execs don’t “manage” anything at all. They have endless meetings where they endlessly discuss things. They have people create management reports but don’t really ever look at them or make any decisions based the (usually incomplete and inaccurate) data. A lot of them are just “middle men” who just pass the word up to their superiors.
I sort of look at it in a similar manner to how an old feudal system operated. Or really any socioeconomic system or hierarchy. They all sort of evolve out of a need to motivate and direct lots of people working on complex tasks in systems where no one can possibly understand how the entire thing works. A lot of these systems are part of what my boss calls “corporate theater”. Often the report itself isn’t what isn’t important. It’s the discipline of forcing people to think about what they have to get done and the perception that there are layers of people who might come in at any time and ask where your report is so they can poke holes in it.
So what does this have to do with AI?
Well, If you had a system that is connected to all these disparate databases and other systems and was reliable and accurate, that would significantly change the necessary management structure in most organizations. In theory it could simply tell you “a web site certificate is coming due” or “that contract has these gaps in it”
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/85 "2026-09-25T19:00:07Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> Well, If you had a system that is connected to all these disparate databases and other systems and was reliable and accurate, that would significantly change the necessary management structure in most organizations. In theory it could simply tell you “a web site certificate is coming due” or “that contract has these gaps in it”
Someone in management would have to know that there are such a thing as certificates, or the people working on them would have to document it in a way to get it in the database, I’m not too confident about any of these things.
I was on a committee looking at our performance review process, and we even asked people to give their opinions. The number one issue was that managers went into a meeting with a list of employee accomplishments that the employee never saw. Then they’d get a bad rating for not doing something they did. We fixed this by forcing managers to get employees to sign off on the input to performance review - not that they agreed, just that they saw it.
So I’m less than confident that people “managing” AIs are going to do better.
Not that bosses are the only ones at fault. Before I retired I documented my software extensively. I even put in jokes. I severely doubt anyone ever read it, and it fell apart. I wonder if stuff controlled by AI models that is supposed to last years and years will work when they move to new models. I’ve never heard that brought up as an issue, because things are so new.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/86 "2026-09-25T22:38:09Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> Someone in management would have to know that there are such a thing as certificates, or the people working on them would have to document it in a way to get it in the database, I’m not too confident about any of these things.
Whoever manages your companies web sites should absolutely know this. Not that they always do.
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> I was on a committee looking at our performance review process, and we even asked people to give their opinions. The number one issue was that managers went into a meeting with a list of employee accomplishments that the employee never saw. Then they’d get a bad rating for not doing something they did. We fixed this by forcing managers to get employees to sign off on the input to performance review - not that they agreed, just that they saw it.
> So I’m less than confident that people “managing” AIs are going to do better.
> Not that bosses are the only ones at fault. Before I retired I documented my software extensively. I even put in jokes. I severely doubt anyone ever read it, and it fell apart. I wonder if stuff controlled by AI models that is supposed to last years and years will work when they move to new models. I’ve never heard that brought up as an issue, because things are so new.
I think the operative work is “performance”. The more systems automate the work, the less you are evaluating the people on what they actually do.
I think that’s the dream driving all this AI investment.
Most managers I’ve worked with are almost completely clueless and lack no real skills besides ass-kissing and presenting themselves as “management”. Not that they are stupid per se. But the system seems to have evolved such that big companies have created these hierarchies of MBA types to oversee this big self-perpetuating machine. But if they need to change something, they call someone like me (or an army of Accenture consultants or offshore tech resources) to fumble along for months or years trying to reverse engineer how this big clusterfuck operates.
And what’s interesting is no one scrutinizes my time even though I’m usually the most expensive person on the team. They micromanage the people doing the actual work and if they aren’t working fast enough they add more layers of people like me to oversee them!
So think the dream is all these senior leaders can tell their “AI wrangler” to check the status of website licenses or insurances LOAs or FINRA certs or whatever administrata (if the AI doesn’t take care of it automatically) or run go to market scenarios or whatever.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [September 25, 2026, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/87 "2026-09-25T22:43:28Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> Before I retired I documented my software extensively. I even put in jokes. I severely doubt anyone ever read it, and it fell apart.
After my negative experience losing all that legacy info I have created a treasure trove of documents to aid whoever has to figure this shit out in my absence.
Will it be used? If it’s ever necessary, I won’t be around to find out.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2026, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/88 "2026-09-26T06:23:43Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> After my negative experience losing all that legacy info I have created a treasure trove of documents to aid whoever has to figure this shit out in my absence.
>
> Will it be used? If it’s ever necessary, I won’t be around to find out.
My old department has a lunch every few months. At one my old boss (before he retired) asked me if I could fix up the system again. I said sure, but you’d have to pay me. A lot. That took care of that.
It’s kind of like getting to hang around after you’re dead.
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> Most managers I’ve worked with are almost completely clueless and lack no real skills besides ass-kissing and presenting themselves as “management”. Not that they are stupid per se. But the system seems to have evolved such that big companies have created these hierarchies of MBA types to oversee this big self-perpetuating machine. But if they need to change something, they call someone like me (or an army of Accenture consultants or offshore tech resources) to fumble along for months or years trying to reverse engineer how this big clusterfuck operates.
I worked in tech in places where MBAs were useless and more or less unknown. In fact, at Bell Labs they had a good tuition refund program, but MBA programs were excluded from it.
I was a first level manager, which was 95% technical. I filled in as second level manager for a short time, and I found it awful. No fun stuff, just meetings and budgets and politics. My observation was that you don’t have to have an MBA to be an incompetent manager.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2026, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/89 "2026-09-26T06:45:32Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> Nearly everyone talks to their car
Some people beat them, too!
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78b67l_yxUc)
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2026, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/90 "2026-09-26T11:46:25Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> I worked in tech in places where MBAs were useless and more or less unknown. In fact, at Bell Labs they had a good tuition refund program, but MBA programs were excluded from it.
> I was a first level manager, which was 95% technical. I filled in as second level manager for a short time, and I found it awful. No fun stuff, just meetings and budgets and politics. My observation was that you don’t have to have an MBA to be an incompetent manager.
No, but it helps.😃
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2026, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-will-our-ai-civilization-of-the-future-look-like/1032973/91 "2026-09-26T17:42:41Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#):
>
> I will start worrying when AI takes the job of a tech CEO. I figure if that’s not possible, then neither is most of the doom saying.
It is getting close.
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>
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>
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And
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/victordey/2026/07/20/former-microsoft-ai-leaders-are-spending-1m-to-prove-ai-can-replace-ceos/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/victordey/2026/07/20/former-microsoft-ai-leaders-are-spending-1m-to-prove-ai-can-replace-ceos/)
> the startup plans to acquire a small B2B SaaS or e-commerce company for as much as $1 million and attempt to run it with AI as the CEO. …
>
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>
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