The conversation around AI and job displacement has mostly centered on workers — entry-level employees, customer service reps, and coders fresh out of college. But a quieter, more unexpected narrative is emerging from the corner offices of some of the world's most powerful companies: the people at the very top might be next.
This week, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed something that would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago. His employees had built an AI replica of him — "Dara AI" — that they use to rehearse presentations before bringing them to the real thing. When asked if he worried the board might eventually prefer the AI version, Khosrowshahi laughed it off, arguing that AI still couldn't replicate the ability to learn in real time. But he added a sobering caveat: once that changes, "that is the point at which I'm going to think, yeah, we are all replaceable."
He's not alone in that thinking. Sam Altman has publicly said he would consider it a personal failure if OpenAI isn't eventually run by an AI CEO. At a recent summit in New Delhi, he went further, suggesting that a superintelligent AI would do a better job leading a major company than any human executive — "certainly me," he admitted. Alphabet's Sundar Pichai told the BBC that a CEO's role might actually be "one of the easier things for an AI to do one day."
There's a cynical read on all of this, of course. Tech leaders have a vested interest in getting workers to embrace AI, and claiming that even they could be replaced is a convenient way to frame adoption as inevitable rather than threatening. The gap between what executives say and what workers feel is stark — a 2025 Pew Research Center report found that only 17% of Americans expected AI to have a positive effect overall, while 43% anticipated being personally harmed by it.
But not every CEO sounds like they're playing a PR game. Klarna's Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who has cut his company's workforce in half over the past three years, partly through AI adoption, offered a strikingly candid take when discussing his own potential obsolescence. "I am not necessarily super excited about this," he wrote on X. "My work to me is a super important part of who I am, and realizing it might become unnecessary is gloomy."
That kind of honesty is rare — and worth sitting with. We're entering a moment where the people making decisions about AI adoption are beginning to reckon, at least publicly, with what happens when the technology outgrows them too. Whether that reckoning is genuine or strategic, the direction of the conversation has shifted. It's no longer just about protecting jobs on the factory floor or in the call center. The question of who — or what — leads organizations is now very much on the table.