Please do NOT hire a chief AI officer

After being out and about at a few industry events the last two weeks, I returned home with several notes about marketing and media trends. I always enjoy these little stretches of external engagement, as they give me fresh ideas. Over the next few weeks, I will be drafting columns inspired by these ideas, but one stood out above the rest. 

To be honest, this is more a request to the advertising industry as a whole. I realise deep down we’re all marketers, and we love, love, love to latch onto new ideas and create new roles around them — but could we please not start anointing people with the title chief AI officer?

First off, AI is a technological wave crashing over everything. It’s much like the internet itself was way back in the last of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. At the time, many agencies and brands started appointing chief digital officers. Eventually they realised this was short-sighted, because digital was becoming part of every element of the business.

AI an imperative across all teams

Some companies have kept those titles, but doing so effectively silos the work of those teams. If the idea doesn’t come from inside the team, it won’t be embraced in the same way. We would be perpetuating that challenge by establishing a team whose role is to suggest AI to other teams inside the organisation.

Second, when you designate a team as the AI team and make them responsible for the integration of AI through the organisation, you place far too heavy a load on a single team.

AI should be an imperative within every team’s objectives and goals, not because it’s cool, but because it can create efficiency, increase effectiveness and provide a strategic opportunity for growth.

Chief strategy officer makes more sense

Instead of a chief AI officer,  appoint a chief strategy officer whose role should immediately be focused on working AI into the ways you do business. It will AI now, but something else specific over the next couple of years.  The strategy role is one that evolves over time. AI is just the most recent waypoint on that journey.

Lastly, and this one seems funny when you think about it, but establishing a chief AI officer simply means that whatever you were calling AI in the past clearly wasn’t.

By establishing a new head of AI, you are implicitly stating that your previous attempts at AI-washing the organisation were unsuccessful and you need a title to pretend this is a new step. I’m sure you aren’t thinking about it this way, but  heads up: This is how it comes off, when you sit and think about it.

No offence to anyone who has recently taken on the mantle of chief AI officer. I don’t blame you! It’s a great title and it probably comes with a fantastic compensation package. I don’t blame you for taking the role. I can see why you would!

I just implore the executives in the C-suite to think before they attempt to bandage the lack of their own strategic thinking. AI should not be the role of one person, but the responsibility of the entire organisation.