Axios House: CEOs will become CQOs in the AI era, HAI senior fellow says

DAVOS, Switzerland — Finding the human elements of AI is emerging as a clear strategy to implementing the technology in the workplace, according to two industry leaders at a Jan. 20 Axios event.

Why it matters: Asking the right questions of AI and using it to augment work can give both employees and organizations a leg up in productivity and job security.

Axios' Mike Allen and Ina Fried spoke with Accenture chair and CEO Julie Sweet and Stanford Digital Economy Lab director and Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) senior fellow Erik Brynjolfsson. The event was sponsored by ADP.

By the numbers: In a late 2024 report, Brynjolfsson and his co-investigators found that among workers ages 22 to 25, jobs in software engineering, call centers, parts of sales and marketing saw a 13% decline.

• "We just did an update," Brynjolfsson told Fried, and "now it's about 16% so the effect is growing."

Yes, but: "The more senior workers did not see much of a decline," said Brynjolfsson.

• "When [AI] was used to automate, you tended to see this job decline even steeper. But for the subgroup … who are using it to augment what they were doing, then we saw growing employment."

What they're saying: "More and more people are going to be … chief question officers. Not chief executive officers. People who define the question for a fleet of agents who then carry them out become the CQO," Brynjolfsson said.

• "Be one of the people who's using AI as a power tool. So whichever occupation you're in, whether you're doing art history or coding or economics, be somebody who's on the leading edge of using it to do better," he added.

Leaders are responsible for training employees accordingly, Sweet told Allen.

• "You can't trust AI unless you understand AI … if you don't have the leaders understanding it, they can't explain it to our people."
• Companies "have to become learning organizations," Brynjolfsson told Fried. "The goal posts keep moving … you have to have a mindset of always updating and learning."

Content from the sponsored segment:

In a View from the Top conversation, ADP president and CEO Maria Black said a key evaluation technique around whether to automate something is to consider if it will retain an element of humanity.

• "You start with that worker, you start with a human, and you think about that as … the fundamental Part One to the design — human centered," she said.

ADP chief economist and ESG officer Nela Richardson said that while there's concern about job elimination, the potential in AI is really in task elimination.

• "If AI is done well, it means that people who are not in the workforce now … have an avenue back … into higher valued work that they actually love and enjoy."