For the love of God, stop calling your AI a co-worker

Generative AI comes in many forms. Increasingly, though, it’s marketed the same way: with human names and personas that make it feel less like code and more like a co-worker. A growing number of startups are anthropomorphizing AI to build trust fast — and soften its threat to human jobs. It’s dehumanizing, and it’s accelerating. I get why this framing took off. In today’s upside-down economy, where every hire feels like a risk, enterprise startups — many emerging from the famed accelerator Y Combinator — are pitching AI not as software but as staff. They’re selling replacements. AI assistants. AI coders. AI employees. The language is deliberately designed to appeal to overwhelmed hiring managers. Some don’t even bother with subtlety. Atlog, for instance, recently introduced an “AI employee for furniture stores” that handles everything from payments to marketing. One good manager, it gloats, can now run 20 stores at once. The implication: you don’t need to hire more people — just let ... Read full article.