What's the pattern?

Every general-purpose technology gets its own executive for a while. Chief information officers appeared when computers were exotic. Chief digital officers appeared when the internet was a department. Both titles are fading as the thing they owned became the water everyone swims in.

The Chief AI Officer is in year three of the same arc. Useful right now, because someone has to build the policies, pick the vendors, and stop twelve teams from buying twelve tools. Dangerous soon, because the moment AI belongs to one office, everyone else gets permission to stop thinking about it.

I've watched companies hire the title as a way of feeling done. "We have someone on it." That's the worst outcome. The point of the role is to work itself out of a job.

What should leaders do now?

So, three things.

Hire the role with an expiry. Two or three years, with an explicit mission: make every leader capable of owning AI in their own function, then hand it over.

Measure the role by what others can do. Not by how many models were deployed. By how many teams no longer need the office.

And never let the title absorb accountability. If the AI in your lending team makes a bad decision, the answer is not "ask the Chief AI Officer." It's the head of lending. Always.

The best Chief AI Officer is the one whose office closes because everyone else learned the job. That's success.

If you hired a Chief AI Officer tomorrow, what would have to be true for the role to close in 2029?

Related: Will AI replace middle managers?

Sam Rad, The Change Futurist. Keynote speaker on change, transformation, resilience, and AI adoption. Author of Radical Next. Book a keynote