The AI CEO: A conceptualisation and outline for future research

Artificial intelligence increasingly contributes to strategic work, yet research has not conceptualised an AI role that contributes to this work at the top of the firm. Drawing on role theory and research on managerial work, we conceptualise this role as the AI CEO: a role in which an AI system performs the chief executive's strategic work. We develop two configurations of the role and propose how augmenting or automating the human CEO affects firm performance, relative to a human CEO acting alone. Cases from practice show that existing systems already perform this work but are rarely integrated across the role's activities or deeply institutionalised. We therefore derive the technical and organisational infrastructure the role requires and propose how its integration, institutionalisation and configurability shape the AI CEO's effect on firm performance. We discuss implications for future research about how the chief executive's work can be integrated into a role that an AI system can hold and that firms can design. This has implications for multidisciplinary research in strategy, technology management and information science.