Talk Title: AI Agents as Employees
Abstract: Motivated by the potential for large productivity gains from AI, firms are increasingly deploying agentic AI systems capable of independent action. Some firms have also begun formally integrating these agents into their organizational structures---assigning them designated roles and responsibilities, and in some cases explicitly referring to them as employees. While existing research heavily explores the effects of using AI as a standalone productivity tool, the organization and governance consequences of treating AI as an organizational member remain largely unexplored. In a survey of 1,261 managers we find that 23% of managers already work in organizations where AI agents have been formally institutionalized on organizational charts. In a randomized experiment we provide those managers with identical documents containing built in errors, where we vary whether we say the document was produced by an AI Tool, an AI Employee, or a Human Employee. In the subgroup of managers whose organizations have already ``put AI on the org chart’’, categorizing identical drafts as coming from an AI employee (versus an AI tool) reduces managers’ error catching by 16%, increases requests for additional review by 44%, and shifts perceived accountability away from the manager and toward the AI system. We find little evidence of effects of the AI employee framing among managers in organizations without such institutionalization. These results suggest that embedding AI agents into formal organizational roles impacts the quality of human oversight in AI-mediated work, and should be understood as a governance decision rather than a mere labeling choice.
Talk Title: AI Agents as Employees
Abstract: Motivated by the potential for large productivity gains from AI, firms are increasingly deploying agentic AI systems capable of independent action. Some firms have also begun formally integrating these agents into their organizational structures---assigning them designated roles and responsibilities, and in some cases explicitly referring to them as employees. While existing research heavily explores the effects of using AI as a standalone productivity tool, the organization and governance consequences of treating AI as an organizational member remain largely unexplored. In a survey of 1,261 managers we find that 23% of managers already work in organizations where AI agents have been formally institutionalized on organizational charts. In a randomized experiment we provide those managers with identical documents containing built in errors, where we vary whether we say the document was produced by an AI Tool, an AI Employee, or a Human Employee. In the subgroup of managers whose organizations have already ``put AI on the org chart’’, categorizing identical drafts as coming from an AI employee (versus an AI tool) reduces managers’ error catching by 16%, increases requests for additional review by 44%, and shifts perceived accountability away from the manager and toward the AI system. We find little evidence of effects of the AI employee framing among managers in organizations without such institutionalization. These results suggest that embedding AI agents into formal organizational roles impacts the quality of human oversight in AI-mediated work, and should be understood as a governance decision rather than a mere labeling choice.