(MIT Technology Review) – Imagine coming in to work to learn that a new underling will report to you. The worker is not a person but an AI tool—one that your company nonetheless calls Alex, an “employee” with a title and defined responsibilities. How well do you think you would work with Alex?

If you’re anything like the managers recently studied by Emma Wiles, a Boston University business professor, treating Alex as a “coworker” and not a software tool would lead you to do a worse job. Wiles found that people caught 18% fewer errors when the work was said to have come from an agentic “AI employee” rather than a chatbot. It turns out that what’s in a name matters. A lot.  (Read More)