CMU researchers just published this study where they looked at what happens when managers create AI “clones” of themselves. like literally train an AI on their emails, slack messages, meeting notes, decision patterns, the whole thing. and then that clone goes and manages people on their behalf. attends meetings. answers questions. drafts reports. analyzes budgets. while the real boss is… somewhere else doing “strategy” I guess?? they ran workshops with 23 managers and workers and asked them to imagine working with these things. the reactions were honestly kinda fasinating. people came up with four roles these clones could play. a proxy presence (just… being there when the boss isn’t), informational conveyor (passing info around), productivity engine (cranking through admin stuff), and leadership amplifier (making the boss seem more present than they actually are). that last one is wild to me. you’re literally amplifying a person who isn’t in the room. how is that leadership. but here’s the part that stuck with me. participants basically said look there are things an AI clone should NEVER do. they called them “human-only zones.” onboarding new people. navigating conflicts. giving performance feedback. which makes sense right? nobody wants to hear “you’re underperforming” from a bot that learned your boss’s passive aggressive email style. but also… how many managers are already bad at those exact things?? like the bar for “human touch” in management is already underground in most companies. so now we’re gonna have AI clones handling the easy stuff while humans supposedly focus on the hard interpersonal stuff they were already terrible at? idk man. the researchers say AI will shift management not replace it. sure. but shifted to what. I keep thinking about what happens when employees figure out they’ve been talking to the clone for three weeks and the real manager didn’t even notice. what does that do to trust. the study’s getting presented at CHI 2026 in Barcelona if anyone wants to dig into it. paper is on arxiv, search “When Your Boss Is an AI Bot” by Qing Hu and the CARE Lab team at CMU HCII. submitted by /u/hiclemi
Originally posted by u/hiclemi on r/ArtificialInteligence