The techies might soon outnumber everyone else in the C-Suite.

Who should be worried?

In the beginning was the CIO. The CIO was responsible for information and technology that supported the company’s business processes. Kind of like IT but on Information steroids. The CIO was happy. The techies were finally important. Life was good.

Meanwhile, businesses also had a CSO for security and the CSO did information security as well because sometimes information security was contrary to the CIO’s wishes. The CIO’s default concern is with information availability while information security peeps are also concerned with information integrity – nobody messes with it – and information confidentiality – nobody sees it who is not supposed to see it. Besides, there was no difference between whether the information was stolen by a computer breach and sold on disk to a malcontent or physically stolen and pawned to interested buyers at a truck stop.

But information security became very technical because of computer security, so the Chief Information Security Officer was born. At first the CISO reported to the CSO. Life was good.

Not really.

That didn’t last too long because of the Internet expansion when a cyber breach, formerly a computer breach, became harder to defend and far costlier in damage. So, the CISO reported to the CFO – Chief Financial Officer. Unless it was a financial service company that deals in risk or compliance then the CISO reported to the CRO – Chief Risk Officer – or the CCO – Chief Compliance Officer.

Around the time the CISO found new leadership, the CIO grew lonely because he had lost the CISO, yet the information kept growing. So, the CIO created the CTO or Chief Technology Officer to ensure that new technology purchases supported the company’s processes and provided availability to the information. The CIO could focus more on the information supporting the business processes while the CTO focused on the technology. Information AND Technology on steroids. They were happy.

For a short time.

Some really smart people in business and the government noted that while information is important, data as a subcomponent of information may be more important. “Whoever owns the data rules the world,” opined the learned. They declared, “data is the new oil” and the CDO or Chief Data Officer was born.

None of this eliminated the CIO, CISO, or CTO. Add in the CDO and now businesses had the Four Horsemen of the Technology Apocalypse if it at any of them.

Then, came the newest, smoothest, and cockiest kid on the block. Things went nuclear.

Enter, the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer. This stuff is so cool and makes each employee so efficient nobody will ever have to work again. Employees will have more time for leisure. Aside from the reality those employees not working won’t be able to afford to do anything during their leisure time, it is a grand idea. Kind of like the idea last decade that the only cars on the road will be Uber-types. Nobody will need to own a car again except Uber-Lyft-Taxi drivers.

Yeah, right.

To be clear, AI is a technology that needs data to work and enable business processes. Data is part of information, and both need to be secured. Of course, all AI sales teams will tell you it is a statistical impossibility for your data to be searched or exposed because, well, it can’t happen.

It just can’t. The algorithm won’t allow it because it is too smart. Lost AI data is a ridiculous premise to start with for it will be everywhere. Reminds me of my early days in the military when the Vietnam vets referred to an FM backpack radio as, um, “Fun Magic” or something like that.

Nowadays, techies can aspire to be the CIO, CISO, CTO, CDO, or CAIO. When they get tired of working for large companies who can afford the latest alphabet soup they can all become SMB fractional and/or virtual whatevers.

Either way, they all report to the CEO, COO, CFO, CRO, CCO or, someday, the COCO.

The Chief Open Claw Officer.

Super.

Just, super.