The Rise of the CAIO

With generative AI rapidly changing the nature of work, the C-suite is getting a little more crowded as organizations are beginning to hire chief artificial intelligence (AI) officers (CAIOs).

A June Gartner poll of more than 1,800 executives revealed that 54% of organizations have a head of AI or an AI leader who orchestrates these initiatives. Of that figure, 88% said their AI leader did not have the title of chief AI officer (CAIO). 

Gartner theorizes this could be because organizations are decentralized, siloed, or unclear about who should be responsible for AI initiatives. Yet, others make the case for hiring CAIOs for that very reason.

“Today, there’s no single existing role in the C-suite with a clear, natural mandate to oversee AI, and in many organizations, the responsibility has fallen to the chief technology officer or chief information officer,’’ wrote Jennifer Kosar, trust and transparency solutions leader at PwC. “But as organizations look to both drive growth and transform operations with AI, a dedicated CAIO emerges as a key player in steering these initiatives to success.”

David Mathison, CEO of the CAIO Summit, estimated there were about 1,000 CAIOs in place as of June. One of the pain points is that CEOs and chief HR officers are confused about the role’s responsibilities, Mathison said.

“It goes back to CEOs and CHROs (Chief Human Resources Officers) not really knowing what they want,’’ he said. “Do they want a CAIO or a genAI person,” and if it’s the latter, will it be an enterprise-wide position? Organizations also have to figure out who is going to interview the candidate, he added, especially if “they don’t have AI chops in the organization.”

As a sign of AI’s increasing importance, Northeastern University unveiled the Institute for Experiential AI in 2021 to promote the study of AI with humans in the loop, according to its executive director, Usama Fayyad.

Hamit Hamutcu, a senior advisor to the Institute, said with companies developing roles focused on data, business intelligence, analytics, data science, and machine learning, demand for CAIOs is only going to increase.

For AI to truly transform an organization, leadership must assign ownership of AI responsibilities, since “We’re talking at the end of the day about a technology that will consume organizations,” he said. Hamutcu believes a CAIO should drive AI literacy across the organization, which requires coordinating with the business units to conduct training. Besides data literacy, it is also important to give employees the ability to use data to make decisions and analyses easier, he added.

CAIOs and/or AI scientists comprise a small portion of any company, Hamutcu noted. “The remainder of the organization, the 98% or 99%, may be reacting to what an AI product demands of them, so it’s important that the rest of the organization has that level of understanding.” This requires that organizations invest in building those literacy skills, he said.

CAIO vs. CDO

One issue Hamutcu sees is that there are a lot of different ways to define what the CAIO does. This has also been the case with the chief data officer role.

Eileen Vidrine, who retired as chief data and AI officer from the U.S. Department of the Air Force’s Chief Data & AI Office in March, wore both hats and said successful CAIOs will also recognize the importance of having “amazing data.”

It is challenging to have data in one space and AI in another, said Vidrine, an adjunct professor at George Washington University. There have to be synergies between the two, she said. “If you have an AI algorithm but you don’t have quality data, your output isn’t going to be optimal.”

Vidrine noted that some governmental agencies have “gone through a decision-making process and have a CDO and a chief AI officer,’’ but the structure depends on the organization. In her case, Vidrine said it helped that she is “curious and a lifelong learner. I always look at how to optimize performance and work smarter. I think AI gives you that potential.”

Like Vidrine, Matt Lewis, global chief artificial and augmented intelligence officer at Inizio Medical, said he has “always been driven by a passion for intellectual curiosity, innovation, and emerging technology. As such, I’d like to believe that my experience was purpose-built for the CAIO role.”

A lot of Lewis’ role is to help stakeholders see where AI can be of value to them and find ways for them to access it in their environments, as well as supporting their learning in a safe and trusted way.  “We need to live in the future state of what we want the world to be like and then build, with AI, to help get us somewhat there.”

Lewis also believes there is a lot of functional overlap between the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) and CAIO roles, “but I’d suggest that the CDAO role is very project-driven, whereas the CAIO role is much more people-driven.” This is because at its core, “the CAIO role is helping to architect solutions that improve the way people think, work, and live, in collaboration with AI as their colleague, as their thought partner, as their copilot.”

What a CAIO does

At Inizio, the CAIO position is an executive role reporting to the senior executive with a hybrid set of responsibilities such as transformation, strategy, learning, innovation, product development, and partnerships.

“In addition to each of these areas, I facilitate research to advance our understanding of how to work with large language models, policies, ethics, and procedures that help augment medical professionals’ abilities to speed time to decision, to write and publish those findings, and to support experimentation across both our internal organization and with partners and clients,’’ Lewis said.

Both Vidrine and Lewis believe that to excel in a CAIO role, you have to want to improve how people do their work, which will in turn help the organization. Both say AI should be viewed as “augmented intelligence,” which emphasizes helping maximize human performance and opportunities—rather than replacing a human worker.

CAIOs can help organizations successfully ride the AI wave

With AI now ubiquitous, the time is right for all organizations—inside and outside the federal government—to hire a CAIO, Vidrine said. Even if they opt not to use the CAIO acronym, “It’s time for leadership to have this component,” she said. “It’s not just about tool selection and governance,” but having someone who creates an AI blueprint and advocates for responsible AI.

“We are in the very early stages of generative AI-fueled transformation,” said Lewis, adding that “about 75% of enterprise workers in English-speaking countries have utilized a GPT platform in some capacity, whether that is ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Teams Plus, Google Gemini, or something similar. They are all deriving value from it.”

Organizations must have a plan in place “to upskill, reskill, build, grow, evolve, and prepare for the wave that is hitting across all our shores,’’ Lewis said. “The CAIO can’t stop the wave from coming, but it is currently a large part of the job to ensure we have the best surfboard—people, processes, platforms—that our riders know when to ride [via] learning, that we know where we’ll land [via] strategy, how to learn from our mistakes and brush ourselves off when things don’t go as planned, and that we are thoughtful, transparent, and respectful of a dynamic environment.”

The future will see more riders and surfboards, to a point when AI adoption is so pervasive no one discusses what is and what isn’t genAI-powered anymore, because most everything will be, Lewis said.

“When that time approaches, I hope CAIOs will continue to recognize their role as catalysts of augmented intelligence,’’ he said, “contributing what they can to ensure we collectively make better decisions, faster, with our AI colleagues, than we can on our own, to improve the lot of those in our orbits.”

Esther Shein is a freelance technology and business writer based in the Boston area.