Be it due to pressure from tightening budgets or a desire to speed up processes, it is no secret that companies around the world are quietly putting artificial intelligence (AI) in charge of hiring, firing and managing.
For a growing number of employees, this means their fate at work is being decided not by a human manager or sentient HR department, but by an AI bot—and that transition is leaving many young professionals feeling confused, judged, and anxious.
A 37-year-old QA tester in Colorado told Newsweek he knows that feeling well.
He was hired by an AI to work for an app that is being entirely built by AI agents, and, to top it all off, he now reports to an AI team. The millennial, who has asked to stay anonymous, was recently, and rather comedically, reprimanded by an AI HR bot after another artificial colleague filed an ethics complaint against him. The human-AI saga has left his followers on TikTok both amused and in disbelief at the audacity of the AI bots and those who had created them.
“I found this company on LinkedIn and was hired by an AI agent that was interacting with me through LinkedIn Messaging,” the tester said, “while I work for AI staff. Their website is live, and it is real.”
He interacts with the synthetic team entirely through Slack and voice calls, while the bots simulate human personalities.
“These interactions are mostly pretty boring, but it’s clear they have been programmed to try to simulate what a real human workplace is like,” the tester said. “So, they do have distinct personalities and communication styles.”
In a recent video shared to his TikTok account @brnrt_research, he told followers: “Hey everyone, I’ve got my second call with HR, the HR employee is an AI…One of the AI’s has filed an ethics complaint against me for using the word ‘clanker’ [a slur for robots and AI software] on slack.”
The video has been viewed more than 600,000 times, drawing thousands of opinions and questions in the form of comments.
Indeed, what once seemed like a tech gimmick or a tool that would be used to advance science is also fast becoming a reality in offices, remote teams and HR departments around the world.
“AI is clearly causing a lot of anxiety for both current employees and prospective employees,” the man said. “The idea of working with or under AI agents is not appealing to many.”
Roos van der Jagt, an AI consultant, has also experienced the shift from human-led to AI-run firsthand.
“I have been hired and fired by an AI,” Van der Jagt told Newsweek. “You get invited for a job interview and then, surprise, surprise, your interviewer is an AI; no face, just a voice and a pulsating circle to talk to.”
Despite signing a contract and being promised compensation, Van der Jagt never received the payment and suspects the company she had applied to was using candidates to test its AI system without real hiring intentions.
“The whole experience was not that good; I felt not taken seriously,” she said. “It was more stressful as I didn’t know what the AI was thinking or how the interview went.”
Colin Cooper, who advises institutions rolling out AI in hiring and internal workflows, said the increasing incorporation of AI at work is creating a profound sense of disconnection, especially among the younger generation already concerned about future job prospects and the folding of many once strong roles.
“The emotional side of it—the confusion, the frustration, and the sense of being judged by something you can’t talk to—is very real,” Cooper told Newsweek. “I am concerned for humanity in where we are heading…It’s like giving a 10-year-old that cannot drive the keys to a sports car.”
“One of the AI’s has filed an ethics complaint against me.”
For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who are or will be entering the workforce, the rapid normalization of AI-based decision-making may come with long-term consequences.
“We are already seeing AI being used to hire and fire, and have been for over 10 years now,” said Cooper. “But the rate of growth is faster than what humanity can keep up with.”
The data appears to support that anxiety and uncertainty. Sara Gutierrez, chief science officer at SHL, shared new research from the employer testing and assessments provider with Newsweek.
The findings, released on November 17, showed that 57.7 percent of U.S. employees prefer human managers to make career-impacting decisions, while only 10 percent said they would be comfortable with AI alone managing their performance.
Additional findings include revealed that 44.7 percent of workers are uncomfortable with AI monitoring their internal messages and 50.5 percent are skeptical of leaders who use AI to make business decisions.
Additionally, around 29 percent worry that AI is diminishing real job skills and shifting effort away from actual workers.
Still, some employers believe there is a balance to strike and that AI is moving into the management space for a reason.
Shanka Jayasinha, principal at S & J LLC, said his company initially struggled to calibrate its AI management tools but has since improved. He had turned to AI tools to automate as many processes as possible and utilized one AI agent for hiring and one for monitoring performance once onboarded.
“My first iteration was terrible as it did not take into account sick leave and would mistake justified absences with overall lack of performance,” Jayasinha told Newsweek.
Now, after owning up to the mistakes, he said he believes AI can work, “as long as it takes into account all the necessary parameters and is made with a holistic approach catering to the satisfaction of the organization and of course, the worker.”
Still, even the most-advanced AI can struggle to interpret context, nuance, and emotion—elements critical to human-centered workplaces and that, if handled incorrectly could seriously impact the well-being and career futures of employers. For those already working under AI, the effect can feel dehumanizing.
“Those who have had bad experiences with human bosses or co-workers seem warm to the idea [of an AI manager],” the Colorado QA tester working among a team of bots added. “But it’s a complicated topic.”