Pay for top bosses at the biggest US banks has reached new records in the past couple of years, surpassing even what chief executive officers got in the pre-crisis peak of 2007. Someday these vast rewards might run dry. After all, in the age of artificial intelligence, what is a CEO even for?

A prediction that many white-collar jobs will be automated away within 12 to 18 months gave markets a scare this month. But few people are yet asking what protects those in the C-Suite from similar future irrelevance. If the capabilities of autonomous AI keep leaping forward, the importance of executives will surely be downgraded to echo that of the technical staff who watch over robots in a modern car factory.

© Bloomberg