“Today, Lattice makes AI history,” CEO Sarah Franklin wrote in a July 9 blog post.Lattice will be the first company to provide a formal employee record for its digital workforce.Digital workers are securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate system access, and even managers – just like any other human being.”
On July 12, after receiving some predictable backlash, Lattice posted an update saying they would “no longer be employing Digital Workers in our products.”
Below are some examples of reactions to Lattice's initial announcement.
Franklin's original post acknowledged that he had questions about what it would mean to integrate AI workers into a process that manages real people, and he posted a comment on LinkedIn explaining Lattice's thinking on the feature: “I'm not advocating for anthropomorphizing AI,” Franklin said in the comment.
Many companies are exploring the idea of digital workers — Franklin’s blog post singles out Devin, a cognitive AI software engineer, and Piper AI sales rep at Qualified — and Lattice appears to have tried to accommodate these AI bots, but its efforts have backfired, especially among the people who care most about them.
Lattice did not respond to a request for comment.
