The Ballad of Joan Henry by Steven R. Southard
Joan Henry must compete with a robot for her job as CEO of a manufacturing company. Image generated with OpenAI Robots have taken over most jobs, Joan Henry thought, but they can't take mine as CEO. The blonde woman on the screen must have thought otherwise. "The AI in this new model is very advanced," Gretchen Greenbrier, chairman of the Board of Directors, said. "The Board decided it's worth a test." Joan shook her head and looked out her office window toward the downtown spires of Charleston, West Virginia, two miles away. A trim, thirty-seven-year-old black woman, she turned back to the screen and faced Gretchen with an intense gaze. "You're not talking about a test. You're talking about a competition." "A competition, then," Gretchen nodded. "SteelDrive will have two CEOs today, and the best one retains the job." "How will you judge who's best ? A CEO has to be creative, visionary, persu...