“Today Lattice is making artificial intelligence history,” CEO Sarah Franklin wrote in a July 9 blog post. “We will be the first company to provide official employee records for several employees at Lattice. Digital workers will receive secure onboarding, training and assignment goals, performance metrics, appropriate system access, and even managers. Just like anyone would.
On July 12, after a very predictable backlash, Lattice issued an update saying it “will not pursue digital workers further in its products.”
Here’s a sample response to Lattice’s original announcement:
Franklin’s original post did acknowledge that there are questions about what it means to integrate AI workers into processes that manage real people. Franklin posted a comment on LinkedIn explaining Lattice’s thinking on the feature. “I do not advocate the anthropomorphism of artificial intelligence,” Franklin said in an article.
There are many companies exploring the idea of digital workers—Franklin’s blog post points to Devin software engineer at Cognition AI and Piper AI sales rep at Qualified. Lattice appears to be trying to tackle this type of AI robot, but its attempts are backfiring, especially for those who might care about it the most.
Lattice did not respond to a request for comment.
