MIT Technology Review: AI agents marketed as coworkers obscure governance gaps and reduce error detection

MIT Technology Review reports that Boston University professor Emma Wiles found managers caught 18% fewer errors when work was attributed to an agentic AI employee versus a chatbot. Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have released tools for managing teams of AI agents marketed as digital colleagues. Wiles's study of 1,261 managers found nearly a third of companies already frame AI agents as employees, with 23% listing them on organizational charts, raising accountability concerns.