Purpose Not Prediction: The Role of Managers in the Age of AI

Much digital ink has been spilled recently (and no doubt will continue to be) on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will reshape management and organizational processes. Some argue that AI will ultimately make managers obsolete. Others predict the opposite, contending that, because social intelligence is irreplaceable, managers will only become more important. The authors believe neither position is quite right. It may be true that, for now, AI’s strengths do not lie in its social skills. As they argue below, this need not be permanent. Yet even if AI will increasingly improve in social intelligence, managerial obsolescence does not necessarily follow. Their analysis leads us to conclude that managers could also remain necessary if their ability (and rights) to define higher-level goals worth pursuing continue to set them apart from AI. To anticipate the implications of AI for managers, the authors need to delineate what it is that managers actually do, and how that maps to the kinds of problems AI can and cannot solve - an analysis of evolving comparative advantage.