Can an AI be a competent leader? Let’s find out

The Register reports on research that explores managerial uses of AI-based “digital twins” to augment their leadership capabilities. The result: The paper’s authors don’t appear to understand leadership well enough to draw a useful conclusion. Very short analysis: To the extent digital twins are twins, by definition their performance must be exactly as good as the analog managers they replace. That leads to a glaring gap in the authors’ analysis: Among leaders’ responsibilities, leaders make and delegate decisions. But a leader who lets a LeaderBot make decisions on their behalf would, in many cases, be unaware of these commitments. And in fact, of the eight tasks of leadership , digital twins would fail at the other seven as well. What are these tasks and how do they stack up? Task #1: Setting direction. Setting direction entails articulating vision, plotting strategy, and achieving the organization’s mission. A leader’s digital twin might achieve some of these. Let’s not quibble — gi