IT Essentials: The boss is out, but the bot is in

The human touch is now optional at Meta

A philosophical question: If the billionaire owner of one of the world’s largest social media platforms is replaced with AI and nobody can tell the difference, did it really happen?

In an attempt to automate himself out of work so blatant it crosses the line from ‘efficient laziness’ to ‘impressively egotistical,’ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has instructed his minions to create an AI version of himself that can take on his least favourite part of the job: other people.

This is the ultimate terminus of today’s artificial intelligence: a blending of technology, humanity (or ‘humanity’) and hubris into the apotheosis of the machine, which now sits above you in the org chart.

More to the point, it begs other, less philosophical questions. What’s the point of a CEO who can be so easily replaced by an AI avatar? What value are you bringing to the business if you’re not talking to your staff? And where are you actually getting your insights – because the workers who know they’re interacting with Robo-Zuck (aka the Zuckinator, MARK-E, Zuckerberg Prime) are not going to talk to it like they would to their actual CEO.

Artificial intelligence today is really good at sounding smart, and devising grand strategies that appear workable but don’t survive contact with the real world. I can, admittedly, see how unkind individuals would draw parallels with some CEOs.

But that’s not the be-all-and-end-all of a leader's responsibility. People management is key, whether it’s excitedly pitching to investors, allaying concerns about change, or explaining the rationale behind layoffs to upset team members – hardly areas where CE-ROBO will be welcomed.

More to the point, what else is Zuckerberg going to be doing with his time? If the aim is just a poor taste tech demo, that’s one thing. If he actually intends to use this to step back from Meta and concentrate on another area of interest, perhaps it’s time to take a few more steps and retreat to the board, hire a real CEO, and give employees the human touch they currently lack.

In the latest episode of Ctrl Alt Lead, Penny Horwood sat down with Aston Martin Aramco Formula One CIO Fabrizio Pilotti to explore how IT is driving performance on and off the track.

F1 is governed by rules and regulations – as is the energy sector. John Leonard has talked to Alex Read, senior enterprise product manager for data at EDF UK about the new Market-wide Half-Hourly Settlement regulation is actually inspiring, not stifling, innovation.

And with just two weeks to go, this is the time to put your name forward or nominate a colleague for the IT Leaders 100 2026 – Computing's definitive list of the most inspiring, influential and innovative people driving the UK tech space.

Finally, we’ve launched Computing Answers: a proprietary LLM you can use to pull answers to your specific questions directly from our 50-year archive of quality news, analysis and interviews. We’re really proud of it, and hope you enjoy it as much as we do.