ICYMI: According to This AI CEO You Won’t Have to Go to Work in a Year

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez
Surprised chihuahua

Commence to fantasizing about what you’ll do with all that glorious free time when you lose your job to AI in 12-18 months because that’s the confident prediction made by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman in this interview with FT’s Roula Khalaf.

An AI OG, Suleyman co-founded DeepMind back in 2010 when he was just 26 years old. Google bought it for $650 million four years later and a few years after that, he found himself attending mandatory professional development training related to accusations of bullying staff. Wrote WSJ in 2021:

Google’s push to advance in AI through acquisition has also added to its management challenges. In a previously unreported move, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google’s London-based artificial-intelligence arm, DeepMind, was stripped in late 2019 of most management responsibilities after complaints that he bullied staff, according to people familiar with the matter.

DeepMind, which Google bought in 2014, hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent probe into the complaints. At the end of 2019, Mr. Suleyman was moved to a different executive role within the AI team at Google.

DeepMind and Google, in a joint statement, confirmed the investigation into Mr. Suleyman’s behavior and declined to say what it found. The statement said that as a result of the probe Mr. Suleyman “undertook professional development training to address areas of concern, which continues, and is not managing large teams.” The companies said that in Mr. Suleyman’s current Google role, as vice president of artificial-intelligence policy, “he makes valued contributions on AI policy and regulation.”

Someone let him know you can bully accountants with impunity, they like a little masochism as a treat. No need to lump them in with everyone who he thinks will be pushed out of their human jobs by 2028.

Look, we have no doubt jobs will be lost in the next 18 months but it’s not AI as in artificial intelligence taking them.

Mustafa Suleyman plots AI ‘self-sufficiency’ as Microsoft loosens OpenAI ties [Financial Times]

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Let’s Dig into the NFL League Office’s Audited Financial Statements, Shall We?

Once again, Deadspin has scooped up some audited financial statements of a sports organization and this time it’s a big fish – the National Football League League Office. Audited by Deloitte, these financial statements (in full on page 2) present the Statement of Financial Condition (I’ll call this the balance sheet to keep things easy), Statement of Activities and Changes in Net Liabilities (going with income statement here), and Statement of Cash Flows with the accompanying notes for the years ended March 31, 2010 and 2009. All right, let’s do this.


The presentation for the balance tement is broken out between the NFL League Office, the League’s G-3 Stadium Program with the total of the two making up the third column. Tommy Craggs focuses primarily on the G-3 Stadium Program which he points out is “a matter that lies at the heart of lockout.”

The G-3 Program is interesting because this is how the league has financed the boom of new stadiums in the last year or so. Currently 13 teams are involved in the program for twelve new stadiums (the Jets and the Giants get to share). Here’s the table from Note 5:

It’s pretty amusing to see some of the disparity in this table, most notably the Detroit LionsGreen Bay Packers owing the League a measly $6.9 million while the Jets and Giants owe over $150 million each. The total owed by the two New York teams accounts for over 40% of the total for FYE ’10 (and the principal balance managed to go up for both, the Chiefs being the only other franchise to have this happen). These funds owed to the League compromise for over 80% of their total assets, financed by notes payable that compromise more than three-quarters of the total liabilities. Essentially, the crux of the organization’s balance is in play here. Obviously, the culture of cheap cash in the Aughts was not lost on the ownership and if banks were handing out money left and right, why not take advantage?

Here are the details on the notes payable:

As you can see, the fun ended in 2008, just as things were getting interesting. The League has entered into a half dozen of interest rate swaps to protect themselves with notional amounts of $249 million.

Some other notable items:

• The Game Officials’ Pension Plan (under Note 7) is underfunded by approximately $20 million, although the majority of the benefit payments come between 2016 and 2020.

• Related Parties (Note 8) has plenty to dig through, however one thing that sticks out is under “Other Related Party Transactions” is the $2 million loan made to “a senior executive” in May 2007. As of March 31, 2010 not a cent of this had been paid back and the note states that “In accordance with the terms of an employment agreement” an amendment was made in March 2010.

• The following paragraph under “Other Related Party Transactions” discusses “amended certain terms of an employment agreement with an executive, including certain termination rights.” This executive can request renegotiation “following ratification of a new CBA agreement [repetitive?].” If a new employment deal cannot be reached, the executive can execute termination rights for approximately $19 million which is equivalent to two years compensation. Just spitballin’ here but it wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that this part of Roger Goodell’s deal.

• Hilariously, under “Litigation” the matter of Richardson et al. v. NFL et al. we find that Drug Program Agents (i.e. guys who collect cups of piss) sued the NFL and several of its affiliates for treating them as independent contractors as opposed to employees. This was filed in 2007 but in 2008, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint for “typographical errors” but the complaint didn’t change. In other words, the plaintiffs’ lawyers didn’t use spellcheck. Ultimately the claims were dismissed in 2009 against the NFL but a settlement was reached between the NFL Management Council and the piss collectors.

WHEW! Lots of good stuff in there, so enjoy over the weekend. Deadspin is promising more “documents from a different arm of the NFL,” so hopefully we’ll see more pieces of this. Stay tuned!

NFL League Office

6 thoughts on “ICYMI: According to This AI CEO You Won’t Have to Go to Work in a Year”

  2. Didn’t the Anthropic CEO say that AI is 18 months away from decimating white collar jobs? But he said this like 37 months ago lol

    Not sure if that’s true, but someone pointing that out made me laugh when he recently said it was 18 months away from doing that that.

  3. Poor work ethic is a bigger threat to our industry than AI. Just ask anyone who has to manage associates during busy season.

    1

  5. I went to a presentation 15 or so years ago where the presenter said that programming self-driving cars was easy and we’d have been in self-driving cars then if it weren’t for all the idiotic unpredictable humans out there. I feel the same is true of AI in accounting. The reason auditing exists in the first place is that people don’t do things consistently correctly, don’t follow the rules, take shortcuts. We will all be out of jobs and handing everything over to AI when everyone follows all the rules and does everything consistently correctly, that won’t happen in my lifetime..

  6. Yet they all still have many open job positions? You are supposed to lead in the field, so why doesn’t your chatbot do all the work?

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