Lattice AI Introduces Concept of AI Workers, Sparking Debate in Tech Industry

$3 billion Lattice 'made history' being the first to give AI 'workers' rights

The tech unicorn -- founded by Sam Altman's brother Jack Altman and valued at $3 billion in 2022 -- announced it "made history" this week by giving so-called "digital workers" employee records and integrating them into organization charts, allowing its human coworkers to see the roles of AI in their workplace. The change is part of Lattice's greater effort to integrate AI into the workplace in a "responsible" way, which ostensibly means treating the technology like a human hiree: training it, onboarding it, andeven assigning it a manager. "It takes the idea of an 'AI employee' from concept to reality - and marks the start of a new journey for Lattice, to lead organizations forward in the responsible hiring of digital workers," CEO Sarah Franklin said in a LinkedIn post. Lattice skyrocketed to success thanks to pandemic-era remote work and tight labor that forced companies to confront hiring and employee-support practices that were previously unconventional. But the announcement from the people-focused company struck a nerve with its LinkedIn followers, who responded to Franklin's announcement with shock and concern for the future of AI integration into the workspace. "This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way, and I say that as someone building an AI company," Sawyer Middeleer, chief of staff at AI sales platform Aomni, wrote in response to Franklin's post. "Treating AI agents as employees disrespects the humanity of your real employees. Worse, it implies that you view humans simply as 'resources' to be optimized and measured against machines." There's already mounting anxiety around the role of AI in the workplace, particularly as its use proliferates across industries. A March 2023 Goldman Sachs report found AI could replace or degrade up to 300 million jobs in the U.S. and Europe, and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee predicted 50% of human workers will be replaced by AI by 2027. The predictions have taken a toll on workers, with one-third of employees saying they're worried about their jobs being replaced by technology, consulting service PWC found in 2022. Lattice's own transition to AI may not have assuaged those anxieties. Its announcement about responsibly hiring AI employees comes a year after the company laid off 15% of its staff -- over 100 workers -- in January 2023 amid hiring and spending slowdowns. The company did not respond to Fortune's request for comment. The ripple of the AI technology in the workplace is already starting to make waves -- though maybe not in the way anxious workers initially anticipated. Amid a strategic shift to invest in generative AI, Intuit will lay off 1,800 workers -- an effort that does not have to do with cutting costs, its CEO said in an internal memo. The financial software company will instead rehire almost the same number of employees who are better suited for the position. About 1,000 of those laid-off employees failed to meet performance expectations. Tech leaders aren't convinced these layoffs are a harbinger of a wave of AI taking over jobs: "I talk to a lot of CEOs, and I've learned very quickly that they are not thinking of AI replacing us -- I can say that with full authority," Ronnie Sheth, CEO of advisory firm Senen Group, told Fortune. While the technology may eventually replace some assembly-line jobs and administrative tasks -- which may result in some layoffs -- responsibilities like branding and management are not yet under threat. CEOs are more interested in constructing and preserving strong company culture than they are with the quantitative benefits AI may provide. Moreover, the addition of AI in workplaces may not mean those employees can't find meaningful work opportunities elsewhere, Sheth argued. "I think there's a balance between rescaling the labor force and also setting policies in place to ensure that AI is being used for human good," she said. "and not taking away people's livelihoods."

This Company Wants to Onboard 'AI Employees,' Whatever That Means

The rapid rise of generative AI over the past couple years has inspired concern in the workforce: Will companies simply replace human employees with AI tools? The revolution hasn't quite come yet: Companies are dipping their toes into using AI to do work normally done by humans, but most are stopping short of explicitly replacing people with machines. However, one organization in particular is embracing the AI future with gusto, onboarding AI bots as official employees. Lattice is "hiring" AI bots The company in question, Lattice, made the announcement on Tuesday, referring to these bots as both "digital workers" and "AI employees." The company's CEO, Sarah Franklin, believes the AI workplace revolution is here, and, as such, companies like Lattice need to adapt. For Lattice, that means treating an AI tool they'll integrate into their workspace as if it were a human employee. That vision includes onboarding the bot, setting goals for the AI, and offering the tool feedback. Lattice will give these "digital workers" employee records, add them to their human resource management system, and offer them the same trainings a typical employee would receive. "AI employees" will also have managers, who, I assume, will be human. (For now.) Franklin also shared the news on LinkedIn, in a post that has done the rounds on social media sites from Reddit to X. In this post, Franklin acknowledges that "this process will raise a lot of questions and we don't yet have all the answers," but that they're looking to find them by "breaking ground" and "bending minds." (This post has 314 comments, but they are currently disabled.) In a separate post on Lattice's site, Franklin shares some of those potential questions, including: "What does it mean to hire a digital worker? How are they onboarded? How are they measured? What does this mean for my job? For the future jobs of our children? Will they share our values, or is that anthropomorphism of AI?" You can see in this blog post how Lattice envisions AI employees in their workplace suite: In one screenshot, an org chart shows "Piper AI," a sales development representative, as part of a three "person" team all reporting to a manager. Lattice gives Piper AI a full employee record, including legal name (Piper AI), preferred full name (Piper AI), work email ([email protected]), and a bio, which reads, "I'm Piper, an AI tool used to generate leads, take notes, draft emails, and schedule your next call." (So where does "Esther" come from?) This is not the company's first foray into AI: Lattice offers companies AI-powered HR software. To Franklin, and Lattice as a whole, this announcement likely fits an AI-plan they've developed. To outsiders, however, it's entirely bizarre. "AI employees" are bogus Without much further context, I find all this deeply weird. It's one thing to integrate an AI bot into your platform, as many companies have done and continue to do. I mean, Piper AI would make sense as an assistant that hangs out in your work suite: If you want to use it to schedule a meeting or draft an email, great. If not, ignore it. Instead, Lattice wants to "hire" an AI bot and treat it the same way it treats you, albeit without the pay and the benefits. Does Piper AI also get unlimited PTO, or will it be forced to work 24/7, 365 days a year? To me, "digital workers" and "AI employees" are buzzwords, and "onboarding" AI tools to employee resources is all about appearances: Lattice can say it's embracing AI in a "real way," and important people who care about cutting-edge tech but don't fully understand how it works will be impressed. But "AI" isn't actually intelligent. There's no "worker" to hire. Generative AI is based on a model, and responds to prompts based on that model's training set. For a text-based large language mode, it isn't actually "thinking"; rather, it's predicting what words should come next, based on the millions, billions, or trillions of words it has seen before. If the tool is designed to take notes during a meeting, it's going to take notes whether you assign it a manager or keep it as a floating window in your management system. Sure, you can train the bot to respond in ways that are more useful to your organization and workflow, if you know what you're doing, but that does not require you to onboard the bot to your staff. In fact, giving "AI employees" too much credit could backfire when the bots inevitably return incorrect information in their queries. AI has a habit of hallucinating, in which the bot makes things up and insisting it's true. Even with huge amounts of training data, companies have not solved this problem, and now slap warnings on their bots so you know, "Hey, don't just trust everything this thing says." Sure, humans make mistakes all the time, but some people might be more inclined to believe what their AI coworker tells them, especially if you're pushing the tech as "the next big thing." I'm struggling to imagine how an employee (human, mind you) would feel when their boss tells them they have to start managing a glorified chatbot as if they were any typical new hire. ("Hey Mike: You're going to be managing Piper AI from now on. Make sure to meet weekly, give feedback, and monitor the growth of this AI bot that isn't actually real. We totally won't replace you with a digital worker, too, so don't worry about that.") I have reached out to Lattice with questions regarding this new policy, and will update this story if I hear back.