The AI personification traphttps://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/ai-coworkers-agents-benioff-altman
The chatbot that's giving you information and ideas today is not your friend or neighbor — and the AI agent that might perform tasks for you tomorrow is not your coworker.
Why it matters: As the prospect of AI agents comes into clearer view, AI creators and business leaders keep describing them as "AI workers" or "AI employees."
That's only going to make everyone who's already on edge about AI more uneasy — and muddle the important debates we need to have about the future of labor in an AI-driven world.
What they're saying: In a conversation with Axios' Ina Fried at Davos Wednesday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, "The CEOs who are here today, these are the last CEOs who will manage a workforce of only human beings. We are really moving into a world now of managing humans and agents together."
Benioff's comment echoed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's prediction in his "The Intelligence Age": "Eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine."
In a blog post to greet the new year, Altman wrote, "We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents 'join the workforce' and materially change the output of companies."
Already, research labs are talking about "hiring" "AI scientists" and corporations are announcing that they have "AI board members."
The big picture: Right now, it feels natural to cast AI programs as new entrants in the workforce to be managed, or new expert members of your personal team.
That's because today's generative AI has entered our lives in the form of ChatGPT and other chatbots — helpful digital interlocutors that are built to please with a stream of words.
Yes, but: An AI agent is a way to automate white-collar work using digital technology. That doesn't make one any more of a "worker" than a typewriter or a copy machine.
When the steam engine, the mainframe computer and the assembly line robot all took on tasks that had previously been manually performed by human beings, no one suggested that these machines were "entering the workforce."
Between the lines: AI makers are rushing to refer to their mathematical models as "workers" because it's convenient right now.
It helps the makers of this fabulously expensive, energy-hungry technology explain its value to a world of business decision-makers who still aren't quite sure what it's good for.
Workers are the single biggest expense in many industries.
An AI "worker" won't ask for raises. It won't need vacations, sick time, and retirement benefits. It won't raise ethical concerns or question management decisions. And it won't agitate for a union or go on strike.
That looks very appealing from the corporate boardroom.
The personification of AI also helps AI makers build the case for charging more for their product.
The business software packages that underlie the revenue streams for companies like Microsoft, Google and Salesforce are typically based on "per seat" pricing pegged to the number of employees using the tools.
If AI enables customers to do more work with fewer employees, it will just cut the software companies' per-seat revenue.
But if the AI maker is selling customers new "AI workers" that cost less than real people, it could charge more for its products while still saving businesses money.
State of play: The tech industry is trying to prove AI's value to executives while also persuading human workers that AI is not the enemy.
The "AI worker" talk charms the titans at Davos but alienates employees in the trenches.
Across America, CEOs are ordering their workers to experiment with AI, while workers are googling "how do I turn Copilot off?"
Zoom out: From the personal computer to the internet to the smartphone, we've welcomed each new wave of digital technology with high hopes that it will empower individual workers. Then we've watched with sinking hearts as dehumanizing realities kicked in and work got more frenetic, distracting and disconnected.
Telling people that AI is "your new coworker" is a convenient marketing tactic — but it's setting us up for another round of disappointment.
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