Why in Turing's name would I want to have AIs attend a meeting for me that I don’t want to go to myself? What’d the AI do to deserve this? Let me give you a litmus test: if you think you would rather send an AI to attend a meeting for you rather than waste your time, your life, on that meeting, consider just taking it to email, or not having that meeting at all. Don’t punish the poor AI, wasting all those kilowatt hours of GPU time on that nonsense. Think of the planet!

Last week, HR platform Lattice announced that it would be, to quote CEO Sarah Franklin, "the first company to lead in the responsible employment of AI ‘digital workers’ by creating a digital employee record to govern them with transparency and accountability." This buzzword-laden nonsense, further elaborated on in a blog post while adding absolutely nothing in the process, suggested that Lattice would be treating digital workers as if they were employees, giving them "official employee records in Lattice," and "securely onboarding, training and assigning them goals," as well as performance metrics, "appropriate systems access, and even a manager, just as any person would be."

The truth is that we need more Jim Allisons and fewer Ignaz Semmelweises. Innovation takes more than having ideas and expecting others to immediately accept them. If your idea is important enough, then it is your job to take responsibility for it and see it through.