OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a message for Meta as its experiments with building an AI version of CEO Mark Zuckerberg: people don’t want an artificial intelligence running a company. “I think the world wants to know about the person that’s going to be responsible for the decisions of a company, and who they’re going to hold accountable if they make bad ones, and they don’t really want an AI CEO,” Altman said on the Invest Like The Best podcast this week, as reported by Business Insider. His remarks come days after reports that Meta is developing an AI-powered version of Zuckerberg to assist employees — a project described by the Times of India as an effort to create “more than one Mark Zuckerberg” inside the company .
Meta creating AI version of CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Recently, it was reported by Facebook-parent Meta is creating the AI version of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. As reported by Financial Times, the project is part of Meta’s broader push to embed AI deeply into its products and operations. The FT report suggests that the company is working on photorealistic, 3D AI characters capable of real-time interaction. While Meta has experimented with celebrity-inspired chatbots and user-generated AI personas, insiders say the focus has now shifted to building a Zuckerberg character trained on his mannerisms, tone, and public statements. This goal of the company will enable the employees to feel more connected to the founder, even when he is not present physically.Mark Zuckerberg is personally involved in the training and testing of his AI version. As per the report he has been spending around five to ten hours a week coding on AI projects and is also attending technical reviews. This effort of Zuckerberg is separate from his ‘CEO agent’ project, which is made to support him by retrieving information quickly.
Shift in thinking
Altman’s stance marks a shift from last November, when he told the Conversations with Tyler podcast that it would be a failure if OpenAI wasn’t the first major company to be run by an AI CEO. Now, he says the focus on humanity explains why AI hasn’t “upended” the economy as quickly as he once predicted. “People have a great degree of trust and enjoyment in working with other people,” Altman said, adding that most still prefer human consultants, sales reps, and engineers over AI counterparts.
Human judgment still matters
Altman argued that even as AI models produce spectacular results, people value the human element behind art, literature, and leadership. “You read a novel, you want to know about the person behind it,” he said. He suggested the world may need a new word to capture the kind of judgment humans excel at — something AI continues to struggle with.