Resurrecting the dead using artificial intelligence has never been a good idea. That’s something we’ve learned after watching every single episode of Black Mirror. All of them with catastrophic endings. Well, Tuhinabi Das, founder of the semiconductor startup Benzatine Infotech, has decided to ignore all the advice that good old Charlie Brooker has been giving us for so many years. And, far from obtaining a catastrophic result, he claims to have saved his company from bankruptcy by bringing back from the dead a figure as beloved as Steve Jobs himself. All this, with ChatGPT.
The era of the “synthetic board of directors”
It sounds like the plot of a science fiction story. But it’s not. Benzatine Infotech urgently needed a strategic mentor. A guru who would set the course for the company. Any company would have simply searched LinkedIn for a profile that fit the bill. Or even found the latest “smoke seller” on Instagram.
But far from it, Tuhinabi Das had a ridiculous idea that, according to him, has been totally effective. He went to his office, opened ChatGPT on his computer, and used that feature that almost none of us use. The one that allows you to train a GPT with specific instructions. The CEO wanted artificial intelligence to become a critical and demanding professional. And since he was creating a virtual entity from scratch, he decided on a much more macabre idea. “Why not make Steve Jobs the honorary president of my company?”
No sooner said than done. Tuhinabi Das compiled Jobs’ best speeches, as well as transcripts of interviews and testimonials from employees who had worked with him. That’s how he emulated a “mental model” of the Apple founder. Basically, he wanted a “mind” that was capable of solving problems with simplicity, something Jobs did better than anyone else.
And if we mentioned the series Black Mirror at the beginning of the article, it’s because the result Das has achieved is strikingly similar to what we saw in the episode “White Christmas” of that series. The one where Don Draper, I mean… Jon Hamm, sold digital copies of people to work 24/7 for others. In effect, Das now has a “copy” of Steve Jobs that is not only alive, but also unable to escape from there.
AI-managed companies. The future?
Das’s Jobs is not there to approve managers’ ideas. Rather, he is dedicated to evaluating ideas on a scale of 0 to 10. According to the CEO of Benzatine Infotech, this “synthetic Jobs” has given him the green light to lay off 70% of his workforce. The survivors are now augmented “super-employees,” working with other GPTs trained in their own disciplines. With profiles such as sales analysts, LinkedIn profile evaluators, sales experts…
If you thought this man was crazy, you’ll be shocked to learn that his is not the only company doing this. Synthetic boards of directors are the order of the day. Every company wants to have its own Warren Buffett as a financial risk analyst. A designer with the mind of Giorgetto Giugiaro. And a salesperson who knows more tricks than Joe Girard.
Despite this success that Das talks about, experts strongly disagree with him. In fact, they are already warning of the risks of anthropomorphizing language models. No matter how well trained an LLM is, it is still a “charlatan.” A machine capable of connecting words. No matter how much you put all of Steve Jobs’ speeches into a blender, a trained ChatGPT will never be able to connect the dots backwards, nor will it develop its intuition.
On the other hand, there is the risk of hallucination. We have all had the experience of a model such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini giving us an idea that was spectacular in its head. But when put into practice, it is complete nonsense. Applied to a large company, this could spell the end. There is also the risk of creating an echo chamber. If a CEO only works with AIs trained with the leaders they admire, then they run the risk of creating an echo chamber that reinforces their own biases. It’s like putting a mirror in charge of the company, repeating their words without thinking about them in the slightest. What a time to be alive.