An AI CEO robot is here to sell you luxury rum NFTs

Apparently the best way to get ahead as a woman in tech is to simply not be real.

Earlier this week, news broke that a tech conference made up two women speakers to pump up its diversity numbers. If that wasn’t enough, we now reportedly have an AI CEO — a female-presenting robot named Mika.

Poland-based Dictador — a self-professed luxury rum company that also dabbles with cigars —  says it named Mika as an experimental CEO in August 2022. This was a few months before OpenAI ignited the world’s sudden passion for AI with the release of ChatGPT.

“Dictador has just announced hiring the first world ever AI robot as a CEO of a global company. The new CEO is a human-like robot, incorporating AI. The robot is a woman, named Mika. She will be the official face of Dictador, the world’s most forward-looking luxury rum producer,” Dictador says on its website.

According to Dictador, Mika has a wide and expanding amount of responsibilities, including identifying potential clients and helping design the bottles for its rum.

“My decison-making process relies on extensive data analysis and aligning with the company’s strategic objectives,” Mika said in a video interview with Reuters back in September.

“It’s devoid of personal bias. ensuring unbiased and strategic choices that priortise the organisation’s best interests.”

Of course a robot AI CEO is also involved with NFTs

What has flown under the radar with this story is that Mika also leads a decentralised autonomous organisation project for the company. This involves a collection of NFTs and engaging with its DAO community.

According to Dictador, its Arthouse Spirits DAO concept is a ‘world first’ and is supported by tangible assets. It claims this is an exclusive collection of the “world’s oldest and rarest” rums.

“Extra value is brought to the community by its members, the exclusive access to VIPs and extraordinary activities that money can’t buy. One of these being the unprecedented ability of the Arthouse Spirits DAO community to meet and hang out with Mika,” the website reads.

While this whole scenario absolutely seems like a gimmick to sell NFTs, the president of Dictador, Marek Szolsrowski, says Mika is the real CEO and offers a data-driven advantage to the company.

According to Mika, she also offers the ability to work around the clock due to not needing any downtime, like us regular humans.

“I’m always on 24/7 ready to make executive decisions and stir up some AI magic,” she has said.

Despite her alleged role as head honcho of Dictador, Szolsrowski has said human CEOs shouldn’t be worried about the future of their jobs — and that decisions such as the hiring and firing of employees are still in the hands of the executive team.

That being said, it’s unclear just how much human oversight there is with all the decisions made by Mika. Considering that news of this didn’t really take off for a year and a major component of Mika’s job involves a DAO and NFTs, I’m approaching this whole thing with a huge dose of skepticism.