What Mark Zuckerberg’s AI Assistant Can Teach CEOs About Leadership

Mark Zuckerberg is nothing if not a true enthusiast. Time and again, the Meta CEO and Facebook founder has dove head first into his company’s key initiatives. A few years ago, he became the face of the company’s — now sidelined — push into the metaverse and remained steadfast even as the internet mocked how his virtual reality avatar fenced, hydrofoiled, and sometimes seemed strangely depthless.

He even conducted internal and press meetings within Meta’s own virtual reality offices, which he said was a better way to connect than traditional video conference calls. He also often wears Meta’s bulky AI smart glasses in public, caring little about aesthetics.

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The executive is now practicing what he preaches in another Meta priority: the adoption of AI. According to the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg is developing an AI agent to assist him as CEO.

Details about the tool, still in development, are scarce, but the WSJ reports that it is providing information to Zuckerberg more quickly, speeding up processes that would normally require him to consult multiple people. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the tool.

As Meta spends tens of billions of dollars developing “super-intelligent” AI models and building data centers to operate them, the company has become almost obsessed with adopting AI across the organization.

The company has encouraged employees to use technology in a variety of ways and has incorporated “AI-driven impact” into its performance reviews. It would also be among the tech giants that have created rankings that classify employees based on token consumption — a measure of AI usage.

But among all the methods to encourage AI adoption, the example set by Zuckerberg may be the most effective.

Data shows a growing credibility gap, in which leaders are demanding and promoting AI, but are often only occasional users of the technology — sometimes using it less than their own employees.

Nearly 70% of CEOs, CFOs and senior executives use AI at work for less than an hour a week, plus 28% who don’t use it at all, according to a survey of more than 6,000 senior leaders in the US, UK, Germany and Australia co-authored by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom.

This disconnect may be blinding leaders to the direct experience of using AI, which is causing a gradual increase in workload and cognitive overload, at least in current use cases.

Separate Gallup research indicates that managers’ support for AI — including setting an example in its use — is a strong determinant of whether employees use and value AI tools.

At organizations that invest in AI, employees who strongly agree that their manager actively supports their team’s use of AI are more than twice as likely to use AI a few times a week or more, 6.5 times more likely to strongly agree that the tools are useful, and 8.8 times more likely to say that AI helps them do better what they do every day, according to Gallup.

By several reports, Meta’s push for organization-wide AI adoption appears to be working.

It’s fostering an experimental culture reminiscent of Facebook’s most exciting early years, the WSJ reports, with employees participating in AI hackathons and deploying personal AI agents that perform tasks on their behalf.

Does every CEO need a Zuckerberg-style AI assistant? It’s still too early to say.

What is clear is that leaders who expect AI to be integrated into daily workflows cannot remain superficial users of the tools; If they want credibility — and real adoption — they will have to access and try it. They will need to feel the pain and reap the gains, along with everyone else.