Learning to Manage People by Talking to a Bot

Two emails summed up the situation with Peter Choi. One was from Peter himself, which began by asking if I was “working hard, or hardly working?” and then sought permission to attend a conference in Denver, which would give him “an excuse to break out my ski gear.” Peter was a longtime, trusted employee, but lately the joking seemed to mask a sharp decline in his performance. The second email came from a client complaining about some shoddy work Peter had turned in. As Peter’s manager, I would have to address both at today’s check-in and make a decision: either send him to the conference, with or without conditions, or not—and maybe even propose a formal intervention.

And that’s when I pushed a button to begin the interaction—Peter is a bot developed by the corporate training company Abilitie. Powered by artificial intelligence, designed to calibrate his responses based on what I say to him, Peter Choi is a character in a new series of what Abilitie calls “case studies” for teaching business skills.