Not OK, computer: firms using Al to cut corners are playing with fire

A CEO sent shockwaves through the business world by admitting he asked a bot to help draft his annual results statement — where will it end, asks Chris Blackhurst

- 

The corporate world is agog. Ever since Eben Upton, the chief executive of Raspberry Pi, said he ran his annual results statement through AI before its publication, the talk has been of machines taking over the boardroom.

The reaction to Upton’s admission was astonishment. Raspberry Pi is stock market listed — these were its first full set of figures since flotation. They were eagerly awaited and, as with any quoted company, they were a closely guarded secret.

Upton asked Claude, the Al bot designed by Amazon-funded Anthropic, to conduct a “tone analysis"of the document, to say how it felt the microcomputer business was doing, on a scale of one to 100.

Getting a so-so score, he set the computer to work. As the bot dialled up the language, the score improved. Too much, as it made his words seem breathlessly over the top. He made some improvements of his own, took out descriptions like “exceptional” and reached an acceptable level.

Eyebrows shot up on two counts. Al is a third-party, it's mechanical, susceptible to intrusion. It was not clear if he did but it is to be hoped Upton used a secure internal system. Then, there is the issue of the statement being entirely his — it is supposed to be his thoughts on the company’s performance. Here he was, asking Al to look at what he planned to say.

To be fair to Upton, he said in public what others may well be doing in private. Still, it was the most glaring instance yet of AI doing a boss's bidding. Others include a multinational senior executive freely saying he uses AI to draft his emails. An avatar of a CEO recently “spoke” in a short video accompanying a stock exchange results announcement. Another corporate head told a tech conference how he uses AI to help prepare his speeches.