Man Promoted to "AI Transformation Lead," Job Is Forwarding Articles

Procurement business analyst Craig Mattock has been promoted to AI Transformation Lead, a newly created role in which his sole documented responsibility is forwarding articles about AI to a distribution list of four hundred colleagues.

The promotion came with a twelve percent pay rise, a standing seat on the technology steering committee, and no formal handover of his previous duties, which he has stopped doing. Since March he has forwarded 214 articles. Nine have been opened. Four of those were opened by Mattock, checking the link worked.

“The role is essentially horizon-scanning,” Mattock said. “I’m not here to implement anything. I’m here to make sure the organisation is AI-ready when the time comes.”

Asked what AI-ready would look like, Mattock said a definition was being worked on by a working group, which he chairs, and which has met once.

The distribution list was created by Mattock in his first week. Roughly half the articles on it are AI-generated summaries of other articles, and a forward sent in July was a summary of a piece he had already forwarded in April. Nobody raised it. He has recently begun adding his own commentary to each send, usually the words “Interesting read — thoughts?” There have been no thoughts.

“It’s a strategic function. You can’t measure it in outputs,” said the chief operating officer who created the role, who declined to say what it could be measured in.

The organisation has since approved a second position, AI Transformation Coordinator, reporting to Mattock, to manage the growing volume of material. The coordinator’s first initiative is a tool that condenses the week’s forwards into a single digest.

Mattock’s most recent send went out Tuesday morning. It was an article about roles created during hype cycles and what typically happens to them afterwards. He described it as an interesting read and asked for thoughts.

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