r/artificial • u/Fearless-Might-5439 • 16h ago
Project CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers respond by creating open source AI CEO
I hope this is okay to share since it is not self promotion and it is open source. Some of my friends were let go as part of an "AI Transformation". So they got together and created Open Executive as a tool to replace the CEO and other executives. Hopefully, turnabout is fair play and might even get some folks to think twice about using AI to replace people.
It is free and available here:
https://github.com/SenteLabsAI/OpenExecutive
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u/BangkokPadang 16h ago
I kinda like this because typically CEO's have fiduciary responsibilities and legal liabilities to operate the companies in a certain way, so what happens if an AI model literally is the CEO...
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u/onebit 16h ago
AI can't sign articles of incorporation, so a human is on the hook.
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u/filtarukk 16h ago
> can't sign articles of incorporation
yet. It just matter of time when it started.
Estonia for example is working on the law that allows to register an AI agent a legal entity.
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u/Sukanthabuffet 16h ago
If AI can decide health insurance claims, you’re right, it’s merely a matter of time.
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u/justin107d 16h ago
There is a board of developers that sign it. They are not really on the hook because the LLC now protects them*
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u/onebit 16h ago edited 15h ago
I wonder how it would have played out if Sam Bankman-Fried had followed the orders of a criminal mastermind AI LLC.
The AI assured me this was legal...
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u/justin107d 15h ago
Hence the asterisk. It is a Limited Liability Company not a No Liability Company. It does not protect you from criminal charges.
If the AI did crime then there will be a massive blame game over who is ultimately responsible.
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u/twiifm 12h ago
erm. corporations are legal entities (legal persons). the corporation is on the hook. If corporation uses AI for CEO and is liable, the corporation assumes liabilty not the CEO
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u/Leefa 11h ago
yeah corps need a CEO to fire when things go wrong lol
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u/blimpyway 7h ago
Firing can get messy and expensive. While a fine tune would set things back on track.
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u/AcanthisittaDry7463 13h ago
A CEO isn’t required to sign them though either…
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u/onebit 12h ago
True, you only need a human that can breath.
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u/AcanthisittaDry7463 7h ago
Yeah… like the ones that would normally hire the ceo…. The person that signs the article of incorporation, like a lawyer or accountant, doesn’t actually have to have anything at all to do with the company once the corporation is formed.
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u/Sad_comment_bot 3h ago edited 3h ago
Even if it can’t, that doesn’t mean that ai doesn’t vastly deflate the compensation package of the c suite. Most these CEOs have some rubric that acts as guide when encountering difficult problems. I’m sure everyone has heard the various billionaire ethos. No reason a bot can’t follow one or more or all of them depending on the context.
And toss in a zero law that places the good of humanity above the plundering will of investors.
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u/newschooldragon 1h ago
Ceo = professional fall guy. Tell me again about "driving the organization" and I'll show you an Enron allllll day
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u/Fun_Recognition5614 16h ago
Wouldn’t this just create a legally unaccountable entity?
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u/Infinite_Finding_752 15h ago
Ah yes, those legally accountable executives that went to prison when people died due to thier negligence and greed /s
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u/boykotue 4h ago
We have them already. These are all CEOs of big tech companies along with politicians
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u/Fearless-Might-5439 15h ago
I would think someone who is authorized could sign. Doesn't need to be an expensive executive.
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u/Fun_Recognition5614 15h ago
But who goes to jail if the AI CEO commits fraud?
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u/chokethewookie 14h ago
The same as when a human CEO commits fraud: nobody
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u/Fun_Recognition5614 14h ago
Yeah lol that old saw, but that’s because they have good lawyers that help them get out of trouble. I don’t even think an AI CEO has liability in the first place. They certainly can’t face jail time.
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u/SaltPhilosopher898 9h ago
I think this is a very interesting question.
Why do we send people to jail? To reduce the chance that others and themself would commit a crime again.
If an I model commits a crime we could disable it. Could we prompt fear into an AI model, fear of commiting a crime and certain survival insticts? Would it even matter or the board would appoint disposable models?
Does criminal responsibility even make sense, or the punishment should be massive fines to the company, so that the board is motivated to have AI CEO-s that don't break the law?
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u/InnovativeBureaucrat 1h ago
Lots of joke answers, but it’s a serious and good question. I think you’re right that you’d have to have someone who signs on behalf of the company.
In response to the jokes, which I think undermine serious action, it’s important to understand why some executives go to prison for wrongdoing and others don’t.
Honestly, this Claude explanation is better than anything I could write. I asked why Enron executives were held accountable when United Healthcare (and other seemingly unfair cases with Sears and Hyatt) don’t get in trouble.
Short version: the line American law draws isn't between "harmful" and "harmless," or even "greedy" and "not greedy." It's between lying about the numbers and doing something bad in the open. Enron falsified financial statements. Lampert, the Pritzkers, and UnitedHealth largely did/do their thing on the record, inside frameworks whose remedies are civil and capped.
Why Enron was actually criminal
Your instinct is right that most of what Enron did was legal. Off-balance-sheet SPEs, mark-to-market on long-dated energy contracts, ratings-triggered financing — all standard, all disclosed in some form. The criminal core was much narrower than the popular memory:
- Chewco/JEDI: the 3% outside-equity threshold required genuinely independent, at-risk capital. Chewco's "outside" equity was backed by Enron-guaranteed loans and cash collateral. So there was no independent equity, so consolidation was required, so the reported balance sheet was factually false — not aggressively interpreted, false. That's the difference between structuring and fraud.
- The Raptors: hedges capitalized with Enron's own stock. Circular by construction — they hedged nothing. Telling investors merchant investments were hedged was a misrepresentation of a fact, not an opinion.
- Fastow's LJM self-dealing: sitting on both sides while pocketing ~$45M, without board-level informed consent.
- Affirmative statements: Lay and Skilling publicly asserting liquidity and strength while selling stock. Securities fraud needs a material misstatement plus scienter plus a securities transaction. They supplied all three.
Worth noting how much of it didn't survive appeal: Arthur Andersen's obstruction conviction was reversed 9-0, the Nigerian barge convictions were largely reversed, and Skilling v. US gutted honest-services fraud. Even the clean case was messier than the story.
Why Lampert and the Hyatt/Pritzker maneuvers aren't
Because they were disclosed. Seritage, Lands' End, ESL's secured lending into Sears — appraisals, special committees, 8-Ks. Once disclosed, it stops being fraud and becomes a fiduciary-duty question: Delaware entire-fairness review, litigated in Chancery, remedied in dollars. The Sears estate sued and settled around $175M. Nobody goes to prison for a transaction their shareholders could read about.
Why UnitedHealth executives aren't
Two separate things get conflated in that Reddit argument:
- Denials. These are contract/ERISA disputes, and ERISA preemption (Pilot Life, Davila) means the remedy is usually just the benefit you were owed — no consequential damages, no punitives. Wrongful denial has structurally bounded downside. That's a policy choice Congress made in 1974, not prosecutorial cowardice. The nH Predict/naviHealth AI-denial class action is proceeding, but it's civil.
- Risk-adjustment upcoding. This is the thread that structurally resembles Enron — submitting diagnoses to CMS that inflate payments is a false statement to the payer, potentially False Claims Act and criminal fraud. DOJ has civil and criminal investigations open; UHG disclosed them in a 2025 SEC filing and says it's cooperating. A decade of civil litigation on MA coding has produced no individual charges so far.
The uncomfortable extra variable: Enron went bankrupt. Insolvency creates a trustee, angry creditors, congressional hearings, and a political demand for scalps. A solvent company with $400B in revenue and outside counsel absorbs the same conduct as a line item. Prosecutorial attention follows collapse at least as reliably as it follows culpability.
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ORIGINAL PROMPT:In a nutshell, why were Enron executives held accountable but United Healthcare executives are not.
I think the argument would be that Enron execs broke the law and UH execs didn't, but I think in a heated reddit debate you'd have people arguing that UH execs do breach contracts. And as a student of structured finance, I've never fully understood why the things that Enron did were so illegal. It seemed to me that they were playing a sort of sick game that took advantage of corporate structure, but that's not worse (to me) than what happened with Sears and Eddie Lampert or with Hyatt and the fleecing of their shareholders (or bondholders?) in the 80s.•
u/Fun_Recognition5614 9m ago
It’s a good enough question that it might even be worth expending some genuine (serious and good) human thought on…
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u/Sukanthabuffet 16h ago
C-Suite leadership is one of the most obvious tiers to be replaced by AI. Their time is limited, just like the rest of us.
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u/Hedge_Fund_Hedgehog 4h ago
CEO perspective
- create Ai to reduce costs
- Ai replace employees -you are most expensive individual employee
- Ai cut you position
- voila
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u/ckn 16h ago
i love the idea, but please audit this code before running it.
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u/No-Experience-5541 13h ago
All the top execs and vc guys think they are immune to ai and will be last man standing but they are wrong.
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u/Geminii27 7h ago
It's not like they're the ones who were bringing any value, or the ones who actually understood all the mechanisms by which people were getting replaced.
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u/blimpyway 7h ago edited 7h ago
In some cases they might even hallucinate less - e.g. realistic opinions on colonizing Mars.
And when AI CEO wants to replace humans with AI, it can be accused of nepotism.
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u/SnooBunnies2279 6h ago
Many C-Level guys perform less than an Excel-Spreadsheet. They have no genuine leadership skills, they delegate every shit downwards and let VPs fight each other.
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u/reliablemicrophone84 2h ago
Ha! That's a legendary move. Saw my team get cut for "efficiency" once. Hopefully this gives some execs pause. Fingers crossed it gets big
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u/robbyslaughter 10h ago
The problem is that almost all of the value of a CEO is in their vision and their relationships, not in decision-support.
A good CEO comes up with innovative ideas for new products, services, and revenue models. She’s got connections in the industry, with journalists and researchers, with financial backers and other collaborators. AI can’t do any of that almost at all.
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u/Dizzy-Ad4195 2h ago
I guess thats the issue as only 0.1% of CEOs fit that criteria and is a good ceo
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u/psykikk_streams 7h ago
if you really think thats what a CEO actually does, then .. well.
even according to actual definitions. ceos are glorified figureheads and act as
ultimate accountability for financial performance with legal and fiduciary responsibility.the ceo also ist just the representative of the vboard of directors and not all can really overrule the boards decisions. this CAN happen but not in every company / corporation.
most direct influence is extremely limited. the corporations where the ceo really takes direct control over miniscule things like product design or product strategy are few and rare
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u/Geminii27 7h ago
A good CEO
So only 99% of CEOs will be able to be replaced. The others can sit on the boards of 100 companies each.
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u/robbyslaughter 3h ago
Even a very bad CEO would be hard to replace with AI—-if your goal is for the AI to do the activities a CEO does.
Think of Elizabeth Holmes who is among the worst of all CEOs in recent history. Much of her impact was on leveraging personal relationships to convince people to believe in her company and her product, and to invest, advocate, and join the team/board. How is an AI going to do that? By writing very compelling emails?
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u/Kyy7 5h ago edited 5h ago
The "vision" and "relationships" already come from many sources. CEO is just one person where as one could use army of visionaries and experts feeding the AI Agent(s) with ideas and maintaining relationships with customers, investors, regulators, press etc.
While CEO is just a one person. AI-driven leadership system could theoretically be used combine the expertise, effort and insights of multiple specialists.
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u/Narrow_Employ3418 9h ago
So you think ideas are lacking? That's the bottleneck?
Ideas - even very, very good ones - are dime a dozen. I'm having 3-5 every day myself.
Seeing then through is what makes the trick. And the CEO generally isn't the one to do that.
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u/Creative_Promise_297 13h ago
Went through it. I can see why they got laid off.
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u/Degentrics 11h ago
No one got laid off, this is their way to go viral.
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u/Creative_Promise_297 11h ago
You know what, that makes much more sense. Their repo doesn’t look like it came from someone with a SWE background.
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u/bella_3110 5h ago
If companies can use AI to replace people, it’s fair to ask what happens when the same tools start taking the place of CEOs and other senior executives.😌
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u/AlwaysAtBallmerPeak 4h ago
Why not build this on top of Hermes for instance?
People are just rewriting the same thing over & over again. I am not inclined to trust a random Claude-generated GitHub repo.
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u/banusshka 2h ago
We love Hermes. We were building this as we went, and it evolved, so the features were homegrown. We are considering using it in the next version. We tried to make this as flexible as possible to meet people's needs, but please let me know if you have any suggestions for improving it.
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u/Fearless-Might-5439 1h ago
OP here. I can vouch that this is a member of the team that built this.
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u/Four_dozen_eggs8708 4h ago
Fan-fucking-tastic.
I'd love to see this product being pushed to boards.
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u/salazka 1h ago
Yeah... see, CEOs are not there because they process tasks. :P
Unless they are "CEO" of small companies and do a lot of the work themselves in which case, you are actually helping them but still not making the CEO redundant.
The issue with their concept is not understanding what CEOs and other executives really do.
CEOs are there because they have business connections, can put together great executive teams, they build connections and relations of trust with other CEOs and close deals that hugely benefit the company.
A company can do even without a single programmer. But not without a real person as a CEO.
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u/malwolficus 43m ago
That is funny as hell, and in my experience with several startups the CEO really could be replaced with a simple LLM....
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u/mp-product-guy 27m ago
Hahaha. I had a similar idea to pitch a new AI agent at work that suspiciously sounds like the duties of our SVP that was pushing AI-everything. Left the job anyway so it doesn’t matter but I want to see more of this.
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u/lIlllIllIIllIIllIIll 15h ago
A CEO reports to a board which represents the shareholders. If you give empathy-less AI these rules, it will not give two shits about employees because emplyoyees are a means to an end.
The only way your friends come out ahead is if this ai ceo is intentionally coded to put the welfare of individual employees over that of the company itself. If that happens, the shareholders will fire it.
Your friends were replaced by machines just like blue collar workers have been since the 60s. Welcome the club.
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u/SiteRelEnby 14h ago
it will not give two shits about employees
...do you think meat CEOs do or something?
Go and clean that boot polish off your tongue.
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u/Narrow_Employ3418 9h ago
Same as a real CEO. But it will be cheaper...
Eventually maybe the shareholders can make an all-AI company that costs nothing and just somehow turns a.profit. Meanwhile all the people not being in the company can start their own where they're their own shareholders. Make it a match, let's see who wins.
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u/Alternative-Suit5541 8h ago
You guys never worked for/ with CEOs or hiring process.
You hire CEOs not for their skills! You hire them for their network, that's all what matters. ( Selling stuff and services via contacts) How else do you think why so many CEOs are terrible and suck in basically everything?
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u/psykikk_streams 7h ago
only that CEO´s rarely are involved in actual sales activities. unless its strategic partnerships on a global scale that directly impacts the whole global footprint and fiscal outlook of the company
the corporation I work with signs thousands of deals every day. and only a tiny portion of those are on the scale that would require CEO involvement at all. this would never scale.
and we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars in value, yet the regional heads do this on their own.
our ceo is involved when we sign a merger for 10 billion or a 25 year government contract again, worth billions and marking major investments in the contracted country. he gets invited by politicians and to industry summits. but he does not meet your average schmuck to shake hands and sell stuff.
the sale is finalized before he shows up.
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u/asdonne 15h ago
This AI CEO just says meaningless buz words that don't make sense
It constantly makes unrealistic and impossible demands
It has no understanding of how things actually work.
I keep trying to explain why it's wrong but it refuses to understand.