In summer 2024, software company Lattice announced some new hires of sorts: a cadre of AI “employees” the firm would onboard, train, and manage like human workers. Though the tech unicorn founded by Sam Altman’s brother ultimately walked back some of the “rights” for its digital employees following pushback after it laid off 15% of its human staff, the trend of AI agents popping up on organization charts has not dissipated. In fact, new research shows this practice has only gotten more popular—and it’s making human employees worse at their jobs as a result.
A study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found nearly one-third of managers across the U.S., Canada, and European Union framed AI as a teammate or employee, and more than 20% listed those AI agents on their company’s work charts.
But the study warned of the dangers of personifying these AI tools and treating them as one would a human employees. Researchers led by Matthew Kropp, a managing director and senior partner at BCG surveyed more than 1,200 human resources and finance professionals on how AI was used in the workplace and then asked them to assess a workplace document with multiple errors in it. The participants were given the same document, but assigned into three groups: one where the document was attributed to a human employee, one to an AI tool, and another to a named AI “employee.” Those in the group with the document attributed to the AI employee were able to identify fewer errors. They also reported less accountability, blaming the AI agent, rather than themselves, for a mistake, and also were more likely to ask another employee to review the work of the AI employee, making a colleague’s job harder.
