Target appointed its first chief artificial intelligence officer Tuesday. The position did not exist before. It exists now. That's how hiring works.
The retailer joins a stampede of companies creating executive roles for technology they don't understand to solve problems they can't articulate. It's like hiring a Chief Blockchain Officer in 2021, except this time the grift has better branding and your mom has heard of it.
Target's new AI chief will presumably oversee algorithms that predict what suburban wine moms want to buy before they know they want to buy it. The company already does this. They've been doing this for fifteen years. But now someone gets to put AI in their LinkedIn headline and explain to investors why the robot recommended cat food to a woman who searched for yoga pants.
Retailers are racing to take advantage of the AI boom, which is corporate speak for "we saw the stock price of companies that say AI a lot." The strategy is bulletproof. Mention machine learning in an earnings call. Watch the algos buy your shares. Hire a C-suite executive to own the narrative when it all goes sideways. Fire that executive eighteen months later when the board realizes the AI chatbot told a customer to shoplift.
The best part about appointing a chief AI officer is the built-in scapegoat. When Target's inventory system orders forty thousand units of a product nobody wants because the neural network got confused, there's finally someone to pin it on. Previously you had to blame Tim from logistics. Tim didn't go to Stanford. He can't defend himself with TED Talk language.
This is what passes for innovation now. Not better products. Not lower prices. A new executive title and a press release that says "AI" six times. Retail traders will see the headline and think Target cracked the code. They'll buy calls at open. The stock will move seventy cents. They'll lose money on theta decay and never connect the dots.
Target now has a chief AI officer, which means in two years they'll have a former chief AI officer.
Photo by Shabaz Usmani on Unsplash
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