Your CEO likewise subjectively feels all of their employees using AI will be helpful, and has the market power to insist that their employees use them.
When engineers demand evidence that AI is productive, but not that having laptops and monitors are productive, it screams confirmation bias. "I'm right, you're wrong" as a default prior.
I wouldn't call it confirmation bias, but you're right that is my prior. If an executive and a line worker disagree about whether a tool is useful, I assume unless presented with evidence to the contrary that the executive is wrong.
I would emphasize that I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the converse either. If an executive is just absolutely convinced that dual monitors are a scam and nobody needs more than their laptop screen, they can run their company that way, and I'm sure there are many successful companies with that philosophy.
Sounds like it would be pretty productive for employees to unionize and replace their CEO with an LLM.