While everyone has been breaking a sweat over AI taking away their job, the technology has apparently zeroed-in on an unlikely target – the commanders. Surprisingly, the threat may have shifted to middle and upper management, instead of the foot soldiers of an organisation.

In the latest episode of the Ben and Marc Show, a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz‘s podcast, the duo spoke about how AI was more likely to affect managerial roles over workers themselves.

While there’s a lot of hubbub on AI taking over call centres, Andreessen said, “Maybe it’s actually easier to automate the manager’s job than the worker’s job.”

They spoke about the specifics of actually automating managerial roles, potentially allowing for better training and communication with workers. 

“Everyone has an idealised version of what a great manager is. Most people have had bad experiences with mediocre or bad managers,” Andreessen said.

AI Managers vs Human Managers

Horowitz gave the example of Cresta AI, which is purpose-built for training call centre workers in real-time. Of course, there’s also the added bonus of not getting frustrated, tired, or potentially error-prone like a regular human manager.

Cresta isn’t the only startup that uses AI to train workers though. Several others, like Observe.AI and Gong, have begun offering services to train call centre workers and sales agents using AI.

Now, this is a step far from actually taking over jobs. AI could be good at training workers, constant mentorship, answering questions, and providing real-time input, which are the core duties of a manager.

“[Imagine] if you had an AI bot that was super sympathetic and super supportive and always happy to mentor you and teach you… never get frustrated. They’re [available] 24/7, if you’re trying to figure something out at 2 am on the night shift… they’re happy to talk to you about it,” Andreessen suggested.

Funnily enough, he also pointed out that AI probably wouldn’t have the same problems as a regular manager in terms of a lack of personal life or other potential interpersonal issues that could affect their work.

Meanwhile, the use of AI as customer service representatives and call centre workers has not been as successful.

Limitations 

While people can make use of chatbots, actually using them in customer-facing roles to interact with potentially agitated customers seems like a recipe for disaster.

“Who knows what the person on the other side of the phone is going to say? Could be something completely unanticipated and it turns out that humans are very good at adapting, whereas machines can go a little haywire,” Horowitz said.

Already, cases like these have been reported, even without a voice-enabled AI customer service representative. Last year, Air Canada faced a similar problem, wherein their AI chatbot had misinformed a customer on their policy for bereavement rates, leading to the customer paying full price for a ticket.

Following a legal battle where the Canadian airline had alleged that the chatbot acted on its own accord and should be considered a separate legal entity, the court ruled in the customer’s favour.

Similarly, to actually replace workers with AI could be way more costly, as seen by Amazon’s recent Just Walk Out debacle. While the company lauded its use of AI to help customers bypass regular checkouts, reports alleged that the tech was actually powered by around a thousand workers based out of India.

So, will AI actually replace workers? Probably not. But whether they will replace middle management is yet to be seen, as more companies make use of AI’s training services.