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Bosses are becoming obsessed with AI, using it to make every decision, barraging employees with AI nonsense (Futurism)
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/bosses-obsessed-with-aiA lawyer was working at a legal tech startup when her boss’s fascination with AI began to veer from enthusiastic to downright obsessive.
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Soon her boss started “making structural company decisions based solely on his conversations with ChatGPT,” the attorney recalled — including asking the bot who to hire and fire.
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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.)
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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’s — and their boss, these workers said, always chose the latter.
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Soon her boss started “making structural company decisions based solely on his conversations with ChatGPT,” the attorney recalled — including asking the bot who to hire and fire.
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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.)
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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’s — and their boss, these workers said, always chose the latter.
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Much more at the link, including a link to a Slate article published a few months ago:
https://slate.com/technology/2026/04/ai-chatgpt-boss-employees-work.html
When Jessica, who works in media, was having concerns about one of her writers, she went to her own manager for help. This writer didn’t seem to know some of the basic skills of their role, but Jessica’s manager had a solution: Had she tried asking ChatGPT?
This was not the first time Jessica’s manager had made this suggestion. In fact, it was becoming difficult to remember the last time her manager had actually answered any question herself. If she wasn’t instructing others to ask ChatGPT, she was doing it on her own—for workplace issues, editorial decisions, and even Jessica’s annual review. (Jessica, like everyone else quoted in this story, requested that her name be changed to protect her privacy.) “It’s like she’s trying to turn her brain off,” Jessica told me.
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Jessica, for instance, did ask ChatGPT what to do about her direct report—and it suggested she send them to journalism school. Instead, she went to the company’s HR department, which, she says, shared more actionable advice. Another employee I spoke to, who works in the legal industry, was instructed to run her ideas through A.I. before coming to her boss. But bots often fail to grasp basic facts, such as insisting that the ratio 1:100 simplifies to 1:25. “It absolutely takes me more time to attempt to extract a useful answer from A.I. than it would take for [my manager] to just give me a two-minute answer to whatever I’m asking him to weigh in on,” they said.
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Two things may be true: A.I. is putting unsustainable pressure on managers, and an overreliance on A.I. is causing previously standard skills to atrophy. “She isn’t used to making independent decisions anymore,” Jessica said of her manager. “So day-to-day stuff becomes way more overwhelming and high stakes than it needs to be.”
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This was not the first time Jessica’s manager had made this suggestion. In fact, it was becoming difficult to remember the last time her manager had actually answered any question herself. If she wasn’t instructing others to ask ChatGPT, she was doing it on her own—for workplace issues, editorial decisions, and even Jessica’s annual review. (Jessica, like everyone else quoted in this story, requested that her name be changed to protect her privacy.) “It’s like she’s trying to turn her brain off,” Jessica told me.
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Jessica, for instance, did ask ChatGPT what to do about her direct report—and it suggested she send them to journalism school. Instead, she went to the company’s HR department, which, she says, shared more actionable advice. Another employee I spoke to, who works in the legal industry, was instructed to run her ideas through A.I. before coming to her boss. But bots often fail to grasp basic facts, such as insisting that the ratio 1:100 simplifies to 1:25. “It absolutely takes me more time to attempt to extract a useful answer from A.I. than it would take for [my manager] to just give me a two-minute answer to whatever I’m asking him to weigh in on,” they said.
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Two things may be true: A.I. is putting unsustainable pressure on managers, and an overreliance on A.I. is causing previously standard skills to atrophy. “She isn’t used to making independent decisions anymore,” Jessica said of her manager. “So day-to-day stuff becomes way more overwhelming and high stakes than it needs to be.”
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AI addiction is a serious problem. It's typically in the news only when it's a case of people having long, private discussions with chatbots where the bot gradually pushes them into delusions, all the while telling them how brilliant they are. In those cases the addiction might not be obvious until there's a complete break from reality and the AI addicts harm themselves and/or others. But AI addiction can show up in what should be normal social settings as well, whether social media where addicts can feel compelled to post what AI generated for them, or business offices that had been operating normally before the owner and/or manager became an AI addict.
The boss referred to in the Futurism article above, for instance, had started simply by using ChatGPT to write his Slack messages and emails, a fairly minor use of AI that probably all of us have seen text generators urge us to take advantage of. But that boss soon insisted that everyone at the company use AI. Then he told employees they should always talk to AI first before meetings or any communications with him, in effect appointing AI as his assistant. He turned to ChatGPT for hiring/firing decisions. Then he bought a few paid ChatGPT Pro subscriptions for the office (apparently they'd used free ChatGPT earlier) which everyone had the log-in info for so he could monitor their conversations with the bot (employees soon realized they could see his chats as well). He changed his ideas of what the company should focus on and what employees' titles should be from day to day, and finally created a company handbook - which he called "The Bible" - which he told employees to study and turn to for all their questions. The article doesn't say directly, but presumably The Bible was given to him by ChatGPT. The Bible was not only hundreds of pages long, but was revised constantly, and employees were supposed to study it constantly.
One person's AI addiction, disrupting many people's lives and livelihoods. With the AI addict probably being assured every day by the chatbot that he was an absolutely brilliant boss.
There's no way to know how many situations like that genAI has created. But I've seen a lot of posts on both Hacker News and various tech forums on Reddit about bosses who'd become completely addicted to, and completely irrational about, generative AI.
I'm wondering, too, if Trump might be turning to chatbots for even more of the flattery he craves, and if a bot might have encouraged some his most delusional recent statements. He has plenty of human sycophants, of course, but he can talk to a chatbot sycophant almost anywhere and anytime. Even in the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Whether or not Trump is one more delusional AI addict, though, the reports that business owners are easily addicted to AI and influenced by it is very worrisome. Especially considering what the AI bros owning and controlling the major AI models might be able to do in the future to manipulate business decisions in lots of different companies.
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