What happens when companies replace managers with AI? (analysis.infocentral.net) AI

The article argues that while LLMs may have some “management” knowledge from general web and book sources, there is little public evidence that frontier models were deliberately trained and benchmarked for the relational, contextual, and accountable functions managers perform. It points to “flat org” experiments at companies like Google, Zappos, Valve, and GitHub as recurring cases where removing formal management roles led to coordination problems, invisible hierarchies, and eventual reinstatement or redesign of managerial functions. The author concludes that using AI to replace middle management could similarly concentrate decision power at the top, with managers’ protective and translation roles being especially hard for today’s systems to replicate.