Deborah has become one of Nicole Ramirez's favorite colleagues. She quickly utters her compliments, sharp and overly efficient. Perhaps more than anything, she's not involved in pay, so there's no internal competition with Deborah at the health marketing agency they work for. She is not even human.
Ramirez, 34, who lives in the Pittsburgh area, says he randomly chose the name Deborah and chose it as a way to refer to the generated AI app ChatGPT. Over time, she asked Deborah to do more complicated tasks like market research and analysis, and found herself typing “thank you” after the results came back. Ultimately, the relationship reached a point where the app resembles a colleague who always wants to give feedback. And the bot sprouted.
“These are things that, in my case, rely on your work at lunchtime when I can go to Chatgput or Deborah,” says Ramirez.
People treat AI chatbots as just 24/7 therapists and loyal companions. Some are also considered model coworkers because tools are becoming ubiquitous at work.
Unlike teammates with pulses, chatbots are never bothering, gross and away from the clock. They don't eat the remaining salmon at the desk or give them stinky eyes. When you ask to schedule a meeting, they don't talk about the kids or talk about politics. And if you reject their proposal, they will not be humiliated.
For many people, tapping an AI chatbot on behalf of a human colleague has a deep appeal. Consider cleaning toilets rather than cleaning toilets rather than seeking help from colleagues, according to a recent survey of Intergenerational Athletic Centers, commissioned by Henna Pryor, a thought leadership company and workplace and leadership strategist. However, experts warn that too many bot bonding can dull social and critical thinking skills, hurt careers and hurt corporate performance.
A Gallup report released in June shows that in the past two years some US employees say they have used roles several times a year and more than once a year have almost doubled from 21% to 40%. As Stanford University lecturer Martin Gonzalez concluded in a 2024 research paper, part of what explains its rapid ascending order is how much of a reflection of our humanity. “Instead of the pulsed light science fiction-like ball, we encounter human habits: poems recited in pirate voices, nagging humor of dad's jokes,” writes Gonzalez, now executive at Google's AI Research Lab Deepmind.
Connie Noonan Hadley, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, is one of the signs that people see as looking at AI agents in the way AI agents use phrases such as “please” and “thank you.”
Like junk food, it's efficient when needed, but too much over time can lead to relational diabetes.Laura Greve, Clinical Health Psychologist
“So far, people are catching up to basic social splendor,” she says. “AI also tends to give you compliments, so some social skills are still maintained.”
On the other hand, human colleagues are not always as gaze as much.
Related Stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Monica Park, a graphic designer for a New York jeweller, was terrified of showing her early mockups of her work to her colleagues. She recalls the heartache she felt after her former employer colleagues responded angrily to a draft design she drew with the F-bomb.
“We never know if it's a good time to ask for feedback,” says Park, 32. “A lot of that has to do with the mood of the person watching it.”
Last year, she became a regular ChatGpt user and also criticised the app, but says it's just the constructive kind. “It's not saying it in a malicious or judgemental way,” Park says. “ChatGpt has no skin in the game.”
Information security consultant Aaron Ansari counts humanity's AI chatbot Claude among his top peers. The 46-year-old Orlando area resident likes being able to ask to modify the document multiple times without being expected to give anything in return. In contrast, a colleague from his previous work would pressure him to buy Girl Scout cookies from his kids every time he stops by her desk.
“It became her reputation,” Ansari said. “You can't go to 'Suzy' without money. ”
Now a managing partner at another consulting company, he finds himself open Claude before pinging his colleagues for support. In this way, he can avoid disturbing his feathers, like when he tried to reach his colleague in another time zone that proved to be an inconvenient time.
“I'll call you in the kitchen and catch you,” Ansari says. “I unintentionally stopped their lunch, but they certainly let me know.”
Because AI is so attractive, workers risk developing unhealthy attachment to chatbots, research shows. A study published in June by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ChatGpt's Brain, discovered that the convenience provided by AI agents can undermine people's critical thinking skills and develop procrastination and laziness.
“Like junk food, it's efficient when you need it, but too much over time gives you relational diabetes,” says Laura Grave, a clinical health psychologist in Boston. “You're hungry for the nutrients you need, the real human connection.”
And if there is an overabundance of large workers in AI, we can all end up being “emotionally unintent OAFs,” she warns. “We mistrain the entire generation to become hermits in the workplace.”
Hadley then adds, companies that rely on collaboration can suffer. “The more workers turn to AI on behalf of others, the more likely it is that the social fabrics weaving together will be weaker,” she says.
Karen Loftis, a senior product manager in the suburbs of Milwaukee, recently quit his job at a large, AI-wide tech company. She said before ChatGpt appeared, salespeople would call daily guidance on how to plug in the company's latest products. That's when they learn about her passion for seeing musicians like Peter Frampton at concerts.
But when she saw the singer-songwriter perform earlier this year, it was “like a non-event,” she said.
Workers who are highly leaning towards AI may be judged differently from their superiors by their peers.
Coworkers tend to see them as tech-dependent, less creative and lacking growth potential, says David De Cremer, behavioral scientist and dean of the Danton family at Northeastern University's D'Amore-Mckim Business School. “It's an objectification by the association,” he says.
However, company leaders are more likely to see workers demonstrating AI chops as assets. CEOs of big companies like Andy Jassy of Amazon and TobiLütke of Shopify praise the technology that drives productivity and cost savings.
Workers who spoke with BI about using chatbots say they are still interacting with human peers, including those working remotely, but not before AI agents arrived.
Lucas Figueild, who lives near Atlanta and works as a revenue management specialist for the airline, says previously he had a hard time knowing whether the airpod, which his former colleague had constantly wore, plays music whenever he wanted to ask the person a question of coding.
“I don't want to scare anyone or disrupt the workflow,” the 27-year-old told me, but he admits that he did exactly that.
If Figueiredo gets stuck recently, he will first go to Microsoft's co-pilot and then approach a colleague for an assist. New strategies are paying off.
“I've learned to be more self-sufficient,” he says. “You don't want to ask those stupid questions.”
Sarah E. Needleman He is a business insider leadership and workplace correspondent.
Business Insider's discourse narrative provides a perspective on the most pressing issues of the day, informed by analysis, reporting and expertise.
