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A lawyer was working at a legal tech startup when her boss\u2019s fascination with AI began to veer from enthusiastic to downright obsessive.<\/p>\n
First he started using OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT to generate his Slack messages and emails. Then he mandated AI use for all employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe called a company-wide meeting to announce that from then on, we had to discuss with the AI prior to all meetings or before communicating with him,\u201d she told Futurism, \u201cbecause if we didn\u2019t develop and discuss our ideas with the AI first, it was a sign that we didn\u2019t care about our jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon her boss started \u201cmaking structural company decisions based solely on his conversations with ChatGPT,\u201d the attorney recalled \u2014 including asking the bot who to hire and fire.<\/p>\n
The boss had \u201cclearly developed some sort of mental disorder,\u201d she said. \u201cSpending the whole day talking to ChatGPT and making decisions about the future of your company and the people who work there based on what it \u2018tells\u2019 you seems insane.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boss was also using AI for surveillance. He purchased a handful of paid ChatGPT subscriptions for the office, said the lawyer, which allowed him to \u201cmonitor our communication with the AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe paid like three Pro subscriptions that everyone had logins for access,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
But employees quickly realized that they were also able to view their boss\u2019s conversations with the chatbot through the paid accounts, and they started to fanatically spy on his AI conversations, too \u2014 especially as they realized he was asking it to make personnel decisions.<\/p>\n
Staffers \u201cwould monitor the conversations our boss was having with ChatGPT,\u201d said the lawyer, \u201cto find out who was going to be fired and who was going to be promoted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making matters even worse, her boss\u2019s AI infatuation made for constant pivoting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would call meetings to tell us that ChatGPT had told him that the leading cause of death in the world was medical malpractice, so that\u2019s what we were going to offer people now,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cThen, after other [AI] conversations, we were better off focusing on bankruptcy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whiplash extended to her own responsibilities, which she said were also at the whim of her boss\u2019s chatbot vizier.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring my time there, I had three different roles or titles,\u201d she continued. \u201cBased on the conversations he had with the AI week by week, my functions and responsibilities within the company kept changing: I had to automate certain processes, then I had to design legal strategies, then I had to manage teams, then I had to focus on sales, and so on for many months. All based on what ChatGPT was telling him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The last straw came when her boss created a document, which he called \u201cThe Bible\u201d \u2014\u00a0a constantly-changing handbook, hundreds of pages in length, that employees were asked to study like a holy text.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal of this \u2018Bible\u2019 was so that employees would never have to ask a human being anything. We were supposed to be able to feed this PDF to ChatGPT and ask it: \u2018What should I do today? What are my functions? How do I solve this or that problem?’\u201d said the lawyer. Eventually, the Bible mutated into a \u201chundreds-of-pages-long document that we had to study and which, to no one\u2019s surprise, changed week-to-week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Faced with the \u201cBible,\u201d the lawyer felt as though she had one option left: quitting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI quit 100 percent because of the AI use,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This attorney was one of numerous employees who spoke to Futurism about their experience with AI-obsessed bosses, relaying feelings of frustration and anger as managers and executives use the tech to barrage staff with nonsensical directives, unnecessary work, and perpetual pivoting. (Everyone we spoke to requested anonymity to avoid retaliation.)<\/p>\n
Add it all up, and it\u2019s a distinct new type of toxic work environment for the slop era. Slate found more evidence<\/a> for the phenomenon earlier this year; one worker told the publication that managers \u201care getting cavities in their brains\u201d due to the tech.<\/p>\n In some cases, employees said, they felt as though their employers had started living in a completely different reality. The workplace had become a constant battle between their version of reality versus the AI\u2019s \u2014\u00a0and their boss, these workers said, always chose the latter.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re on the front lines dealing with people day in and day out, and having the conversations, and being told what\u2019s important to them, and taking that information back to a founder and saying, \u2018Hey, I\u2019ve talked to 15 people this week, and they\u2019ve all literally said this exact same thing,’\u201d recalled one man, a high-level sales strategist who also quit a job due to his then-boss\u2019s AI fixation. \u201cAnd the founder says, \u2018Well, that\u2019s not what we found. That\u2019s not what Claude has said, or what ChatGPT has said.’\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In many cases, a boss seemed to become hooked on a chatbot\u2019s flattery, mistaking sycophancy for even-handed guidance.<\/p>\n \u201cMy view of AI was very different from my supervisor\u2019s. I saw it as a tool that could help analyze information, find patterns, and make funny cat meme pictures,\u201d said one worker, an IT staffer at a tech company. \u201cHe seemed to use it more as a digital priest whose primary purpose was to confirm that he was right and everyone else was mistaken.\u201d<\/p>\n The supervisor \u201cwould routinely copy and paste nearly every conversation he had with employees and managers into ChatGPT, asking whether he had handled the situation correctly,\u201d the IT worker added. \u201cThe answer was almost always some variation of, \u2018Yes, your approach was appropriate,\u2019 effectively reinforcing whatever decision he had already made.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, according to the staffer, it seemed as though his supervisor\u2019s attempts to use AI to review his own behavior and decision-making were backfiring.<\/p>\n As they were pulled in, certain bosses seemed to become less and less receptive to human feedback as the AI continued to validate their ideas about what was working \u2014\u00a0or not \u2014\u00a0in the workplace.<\/p>\n \u201cDude lived AI,\u201d the sales strategist recalled of the founder and CEO of his former employer, a software-as-a-service cloud platform for manufacturers that had rebranded as an AI-powered, all-in-one business management tool. (The new platform was largely vibe-coded by the CEO, the strategist says he later found out.)<\/p>\n But the new platform wasn\u2019t selling, said the strategist. And when he tried to tell the company\u2019s CEO what prospective clients were saying about why the product wasn\u2019t a good fit, it fell on deaf ears. According to his boss\u2019s AI advisor, it was the sales specialist who was at fault.<\/p>\n \u201cThe AI was like, \u2018Oh, the reason why you\u2019re not selling is that this guy\u2019s the problem,’\u201d he recollected. \u201c\u2018He doesn\u2019t know how to sell.’\u201d<\/p>\n Convinced that the problem was the sales strategy, the CEO decided to vibe-code a \u201csales intelligence\u201d and \u201cfeedback tool\u201d that was designed to tell reps what they were doing incorrectly.<\/p>\n But AI will \u201cspit out whatever you want it to spit out,\u201d the strategist said. \u201cThe prompt was: \u2018analyze this and find everything the rep did wrong.\u2019 Well, what if the rep didn\u2019t do anything wrong? What if it was actually a really good call? It wouldn\u2019t call out anything that was good. It would just call out all the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n AI is \u201cgoing to spit out the narrative that you want it to spit out,\u201d he added. \u201cIf you really want AI to tell you that your idea is the best idea ever, it\u2019ll tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point, the strategist said, the CEO became convinced that his employees were failing to find \u201cgreenfield\u201d companies \u2014\u00a0a business term for a brand-new venture built in an undeveloped space or market \u2014 perfectly primed for his tech.<\/p>\n But according to the strategist, this idea was completely unrealistic. In their sector, greenfield companies tend to be small, with just a handful of employees; the CEO, meanwhile, was pushing employees to find companies with 100 employees or more.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not going to just walk into these companies that have 100 employees and say, \u2018We\u2019re going to be the replacement for nothing.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d the strategist recalled. \u201cBut AI was telling [the CEO] that those companies did exist.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like being in an abusive marriage,\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019m sitting here dealing with somebody that isn\u2019t living in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n The situation grew so untenable that the strategist ended up quitting his job, too.<\/p>\n