Why are CEOs like Zuckerberg building AI versions of themselves?

Meta is developing a photorealistic, three-dimensional AI avatar of Mark Zuckerberg, trained on his public statements, mannerisms, and current corporate strategy, that employees will be able to video-call for managerial guidance and feedback.

Zuckerberg is personally involved in testing it. If that sounds like science fiction, Jack Dorsey is already running a version of the same idea at scale.

The Zuckerbot: What is Meta actually building?

From an April 13 Financial Times article, the avatar creation project is still in its infancy but is regarded as one of the earliest priorities at Meta, together with the creation of AI personalities that can interact with Facebook and Instagram users in the future. The bot would pretend to be Zuckerberg and answer questions in his personality.

Meta has not provided any comments as yet. However, there have been precedents. Last February, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan both had an AI version of themselves make portions of their earnings call presentation.

Dorsey is taking things much further at Block, formerly known as Square. In February, the company laid off 40% of its employees, about 4,000 workers. Dorsey then explained his vision for the company’s management structure going forward during an interview in April on the Long Strange Trip podcast.

"I would want to get that down to two to three this year," he said of the management levels separating him from any employee. "And in the most ideal case, there is no layer; everyone in the company reports to me, and that would be all 6,000 of the company."

From Hierarchy to Intelligence, which is written by Dorsey together with partner at Sequoia Capital Roelof Botha, describes the move from one architectural structure to another deliberately. While companies mostly integrate artificial intelligence into the existing infrastructure as a way of improving productivity, Botha and Dorsey advocate for building the company as a mini AGI (artificial general intelligence).