It appears that people are not yet prepared for “digital workers.”
It’s the lesson that CEO Sarah Franklin of Lattice, a human resources and performance management platform that provides over 5,000 firms globally with performance coaching, talent reviews, automated onboarding, compensation management, and a plethora of other HR solutions, has learned.
What exactly is a digital worker? Avatars like Piper the sales representative, Harvey the lawyer, Devin the engineer, and Einstein the service agent have “entered the workforce and become our colleagues,” according to Franklin. But these aren’t actual employees. They are AI-driven bots. Companies include the massive customer relationship management platform Salesforce and startups like Cognition.ai and Qualified to execute work in place of humans.
Implementation of digital workers
Think about this. Sales and marketing personnel can use Salesforce’s Einstein to execute tasks, communicate with prospects, and forecast profits. Devin, a software engineer at Cognition, can plan and carry out intricate engineering jobs that need thousands of decisions, remember essential context at each stage, and correct mistakes as he learns over time. A qualified sales representative, Piper is “bright, hard-working, and crushes her pipeline targets.” She “works around the clock to convert inbound website traffic into pipeline.” To the best of my knowledge, none of these agents need retirement plans, paid time off, or health insurance.
Franklin saw an opening and determined to seize it. The business announced on July 9 that it will start to support and respect digital workers as part of its platform, just like it would any other worker.
“Lattice is creating history in AI today,” declared Franklin. “We will be the pioneers in providing official employee records in Lattice to digital workers.” In addition to goals, performance indicators, suitable system access, and even a manager, digital employees will be safely onboarded and taught—as anyone would be.
Backlash and concerns
The response came back quickly and, in many cases, brutally, especially on LinkedIn, which isn’t well-known for its harsh interactions like X (formerly Twitter).
Executive Sawyer Middeleer of a company that utilizes AI to assist with sales research posted on LinkedIn, saying, “This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way. And I say that as someone building an AI company.” “You are disrespecting the humanity of your actual employees when you treat AI agents as employees. Worse, it suggests that you consider people to be nothing more than “resources” to be maximized and compared to computers. The work climate in question is not conducive to employee advancement, but rather the complete reverse.”
A marketing executive working for himself, Scott Burgess was even more straightforward.
“Terrifying.” He says that his belief that artificial intelligence will destroy everything is growing stronger as it is applied more and more in many fields. Already facing significant challenges, workers now have to contend with the competition from “AI workers.” Could we repackage it and return it back in the box?
The negative response was so strong that Franklin was forced to halt her company’s intentions three days after making the announcement—the post even gained the unpleasant distinction of being included in the “LinkedIn Lunatics” subreddit).
The future of digital workers
These are reasonable worries, of course. Was Franklin, however, at fault here? Are we not going to have “digital employees”?
“The overhype around AI at the moment is undeniable. We’ve witnessed the embarrassing gaffes in Google’s AI results. We’ve seen that Microsoft’s Copilot AI product performs below expectations. Despite all the forecasts, prophecies, and soothsaying, we are aware that artificial intelligence is still very much in its infancy. According to what I hear from my clients and what I’ve seen in various studies, even the AI-powered “digital assistants” listed above are only known to be able to accomplish the most basic duties at this time. Most executives accurately see AI at this early stage as being as unreliable as a kid.”
Franklin committed the same error as Google, Microsoft, and other major tech companies: in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage, Franklin overhyped a product that was yet unready for prime time.
You can’t really blame her. Simply put, she carried out that vision prematurely, just like many others do. AI is still in its infancy, and people are still attempting to understand what it means for them. In the not-too-distant future, there will undoubtedly be “digital employees,” and they will perform better than many human employees. We simply don’t know when that day will arrive. It’s obviously not at this time.
(Tashia Bernardus)