CDO and CAIO roles might have a built-in expiration date

Chief ecommerce officers, once crucial members of the C-suite at many organizations, have all but disappeared as online sales emerged as a main revenue driver instead of a sideshow. Some experts believe chief AI officers and chief data officers could face the same fate.

AI use and good data governance will eventually become so central to most organizations that all top executives, even beyond CIOs and CTOs, will need to understand the impact and deliver results, some IT leaders say.

When all parts of the business, including the CFO and CMO organizations, are executing AI and data strategies, CAIOs and CDOs may no longer be necessary, says Glen McCracken, head of data, analytics, and automation at ION Analytics, a data modeling firm focused on capital markets.

“We used to have chief ecommerce officers, and it made sense in the short term, but then longer term, every part of the business needed to understand how to use the internet to be more effective in their roles,” he says. “We’re at the same stage and saying, ‘Wow, you need this separate chief AI officer role.’”

In recent conversations about the role of the CAIO, McCracken pushed back on the reason for the position. “My throwaway comment was, ‘Shouldn’t that be the CIO?’” he says. “Isn’t that their role?”

In a recent LinkedIn post, McCracken predicted that the CAIO and CDO roles will eventually disappear. The debate in the comments was lively, with several posters agreeing with him, and others questioning his logic.

Organizations currently appoint CDOs and CAIOs to build strategies and bring structure to their data efforts, he writes.

“But as AI becomes embedded in how we hire, forecast, market, serve, and operate, these roles, too, may dissolve into the fabric of leadership,” he writes. “Not because they’re unimportant. But because they’re everywhere.”

While many LinkedIn posters argued with McCracken, many CDOs also don’t see a future for their jobs. More than 29% of CDOs, CAIOs, and people with similar jobs believe the CDO role is a transitional one that will eventually disappear, according to a survey by the Data & AI Leadership Exchange, released earlier this year. Just 33% of the organizations represented in the survey had appointed a CAIO.

McCracken’s argument resonated with some IT leaders. New executive roles emerge at times of great disruption, but then disappear as new technologies become ubiquitous, says Jeremiah Stone, CTO at integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) provider SnapLogic.

The C-suite — which has been expanding to incorporate more technical chiefs of late — may soon be up for a reckoning, Stone and others contend.

CDOs may be safer

The CDO role, however, may have a better future than the CAIO role, Stone says.

“The CDO role is likely to be durable, much due to the long-term strategic value of data; however, it is likely to evolve to encompass more strategic business responsibility,” he says. “The CAIO, on the other hand, is likely to be subsumed into CTO or CDO roles as AI technology folds into core technologies and architectures standardize.”

For now, both CIAOs and CDOs have responsibilities beyond championing the use of AI and good data governance, Stone adds. They will build the foundation for enterprise-wide benefits of AI and good data management.

“As AI and data literacy take hold across the enterprise, CDOs and CAIOs will shift from internal change enablers and project champions to strategic leaders and organization-wide enablers,” he says. “They are, and will continue to grow more, responsible for setting standards, aligning AI with business goals, and ensuring secure, scalable operations.”

Craig Martell, CAIO at data security and management vendor Cohesity, agrees that the CDO position may have a better long-term prognosis than the CAIO position. Good data governance and management will remain critical for many organizations well into the future, he says, and that job may not be easy to fold into the CIO’s responsibilities.

“What the chief data officer does is different than what the CIO does,” says Martell, the former chief data and AI officer at the US Department of Defense. “The CIO is responsible for the bits — either your access to the bits through particular apps or the protection of the bits — but the chief data officer’s job is to understand which of those bits represent valuable data for the company.”

On the other hand, the future of the CAIO position may depend on the AI maturity at each organization, he adds. When AI use and expertise permeates all corners of an organization, a CAIO may no longer be needed, he adds.

“One of the main jobs of the chief AI officer is trying to help people understand what it means to build and maintain the AI systems in the company,” he says. “I can imagine that chief AI officers will go away if not just the AI understanding, but also the AI engineering, is mature, and the chief product officer also has an understanding about what AI can provide.”

The number of CAIOs could also decline if the AI hype generated over the past couple of years doesn’t eventually live up to the promises, Martell adds. “If that potential for value doesn’t play out well, then the chief AI officer will suddenly decide to become an advisor and go looking for another position,” he says.

Expert leaders still needed

Other data and AI leaders doubt that CDOs and CAIOs will disappear from the IT landscape. The jobs at some companies will disappear over time, and both positions may evolve, but many organizations still need data and AI leadership, says Cindi Howson, chief data and AI strategy officer at ThoughtSpot, provider of an agentic analytics platform.

“While it’s true that AI and data literacy are becoming embedded across organizations, and that’s a good thing, it’s not the end for CDOs or CAIOs,” she says. “In fact, many organizations are failing miserably at gen AI because they lack a solid data foundation.”

With gen AI often a boardroom conversation, organizations will see the need for leaders who understand how to align data, AI, and business strategies, she adds.

“AI is only as good as the data and governance behind it,” Howson says. “Without strong, ethical leadership, organizations risk amplifying bias, degrading trust, and automating poor decisions at scale.”

The importance of both AI and data governance bodes well for a continued leadership role in those fields, although in many cases, these experts may not have a C-suite position, adds Serena Huang, an AI consultant and former CDO.

CDOs are more common in the large companies she works with, Huang says, but it can be an “awkward” role that sometimes reports to a CTO or CIO, and not the CEO.

In some cases, organizations may never appoint a CDO or CAIO, but many will hire a lower-level manager to guide their data and AI efforts, she adds.

Counter to McCracken’s position — that organizations with mature AI strategies may no longer need a CAIO — Huang sees many companies that are still in their AI infancies and may not yet need a CAIO. In many cases, organizations still lack the data maturity needed to fully take advantage of AI tools, she adds.

“Companies are now quickly realizing their data foundation is not in a good place, and they can’t maximize the opportunities with AI just yet,” she adds. “I’m seeing more companies not quite investing in a chief AI officer, but they’re investing a lot more in the data foundation so that they can do AI a little bit later.”