Does It Matter Who Creates and Uses Artificial Colleagues? Response to Branda

Abstract In ‘The Illusion of “AI-First”: Organizational Rationality and the Performative Translation of AI Hype’, Francesco Branda offers pertinent observations about how AI tools are implemented in organisations. Branda points out that AI systems are not always implemented through formal processes by managers. Instead, employees turn to AI informally. This observation points to a blind spot of our recent article, ‘The Potential and Limitations of Artificial Colleagues’. In discussing whether artificial agents can replace human colleagues at the workplace, our article assumes that artificial colleagues are developed and implemented through formal channels. We do not discuss scenarios in which employees create and use artificial colleagues through informal practices without managerial oversight or involvement. The question, then, arises whether our conclusions still hold in such scenarios. We argue that our argument holds, for the most part, even when employees themselves create the artificial colleagues. Regardless of who creates them, artificial colleagues cannot realise the goods of collegial relationships; however, where artificial colleagues are created by workers rather than management, the concern about their effect on human collegial relationships becomes less pressing.