Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha Propose AI to Replace Hierarchical Management in Organizations

Mars Finance reports that on March 31, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha co-authored a lengthy article titled “From Hierarchy to Intelligence,” outlining how AI replacing human hierarchical coordination will become the dominant model for future organizations, bringing an end to over two millennia of reliance on hierarchy. Their core arguments are as follows: For over 2,000 years, organizational design has been built upon hierarchy—a structure rooted in military and industrial eras, constrained by the human “span of control,” typically limited to effectively managing only 3–8 individuals. Hierarchy is essentially an “information routing protocol,” but it significantly slows information flow and decision-making as layers increase. Block is experimenting with AI to completely replace human hierarchical coordination, transforming the company from a “hierarchical organization” into a “company built as an agent.” Value will shift from hierarchy to intelligence; human roles will be pushed to the “edge,” responsible for confronting reality, intuition, and ethics, while AI handles coordination, alignment, and proactive decision-making. The article proposes using AI to construct two key world models to replace middle management: - The Company World Model: Based on decision logs, code, documents, and other data generated by remote work, enabling AI to continuously maintain an accurate understanding of internal company operations. - The Customer World Model: Built on real transaction data from platforms like Cash App and Square (which Block considers money to be the most honest signal), creating a deep understanding of customers’ actual economic conditions.