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HR tech company Lattice announced last week it made “AI history” by becoming the first platform to give digital workers official employee records, before scrapping the plan after backlash from HR and tech professionals.
The people management platform proposed a development on July 9 that would allow AI agents to be treated as employees on its software, integrating them into the company’s organizational chart.
"The conversation around digital workers has been theoretical – until now. The AI workforce is here, and Lattice believes that we need to fully understand what it looks like to integrate AI employees into the workforce to make sure we create transparent, responsible practices around hiring AI," said Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, in an initial statement outlining the move.
"That's why we want to be the first to bring an AI employee through all the same steps as a human one – onboarding, goal setting, receiving feedback – to uncover the challenges we'll face with the AI workforce, and start to come up with practical solutions for our customers."
The move, however, was met with criticism from HR professionals and workers in the tech industry.
“This strategy and messaging misses the mark in a big way, and I say that as someone building an AI company,” wrote Sawyer Middeleer, Chief of Staff at Aomni, under a LinkedIn post from Franklin announcing the move.
“Treating AI agents as employees disrespects the humanity of your real employees,” he continued. “Worse, it implies that you view humans simply as "resources" to be optimized and measured against machines.”
A senior HR program manager at Amazon added that while the AI product wouldn’t meet any customer needs and suggested there are “plenty of existing human problems to solve in the HR space” which Lattice could have focused on solving instead.
Under the proposed plan, Lattice’s platform would have allowed employers to onboard AI agents and assign them managers responsible for holding them to account. Employers would also have been able to offer the digital employees training and monitor their performance.
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"This is going to be a huge learning moment for us, and for the industry," Franklin initially stated—but following the feedback that indicated the HR profession does not wish to treat AI agents as equivalent to human employees, the tech company canceled the feature indefinitely.
“This innovation sparked a lot of conversation and questions that have no clear answers yet,” she told Fortune. “We look forward to continuing to work with our customers on the responsible use of AI but will not further pursue digital workers in the product.”
Employers continue to navigate the shift toward major AI adoption in the workplace. Last week, business software giant Intuit announced 1,800 employees – 10% of its workforce – would lose their jobs amid a shift to generative AI adoption.
Workers have consistently reported fears over the impact of AI following the acceleration in its use within the workplace, with a 2023 CNBC SurveyMonkey Workforce survey finding 60% of employees who use AI regularly reported they worry about its impact on their jobs.
