I Built AI Clones of My Coworkers. Things Got Weird

我为同事制作了 AI 克隆体，结果事情变得有些诡异

When I decided to create artificial intelligence clones of my editors, my intentions were pure: I just wanted them to think I was good at my job. 当我决定为我的编辑们创建人工智能克隆体时，我的初衷很单纯：我只是想让他们觉得我很胜任这份工作。

AI assistants are suddenly everywhere in the workplace. Each week, my inbox is flooded with press releases about digital workers, and CEOs brag about how robot helpers will soon dominate their workforces. Then there are the stories I hear about people who build AI clones of their bosses, using them to spit-shine every idea, message, or draft before sending it over to their actual human supervisors. The goal seems to be productivity and optimization: If employees can cheaply and quickly improve their output, their job performance—and the performance of their employers—will be better for it. 人工智能助手突然间遍布职场。每周，我的收件箱都被关于“数字员工”的新闻稿塞满，首席执行官们吹嘘着机器人助手将如何很快主导他们的员工队伍。此外，我还听说有人为老板制作 AI 克隆体，在将任何想法、信息或草稿发送给真正的上司之前，先用这些克隆体进行润色。其目标似乎是生产力和优化：如果员工能以低廉且快速的方式提高产出，那么他们的工作表现——以及雇主的业绩——都会因此受益。

I didn’t need my bots to improve Condé Nast’s bottom line. I just needed them to make me look good. I had only been reporting on the future of work at WIRED for a few months, and I reasoned that the bots could help me mold myself into an ideal colleague. They could help me navigate a new workplace and better understand my editors: what they liked, how they communicated, what success might look like to them. 我并不需要我的机器人来提高康泰纳仕（Condé Nast）的利润。我只是需要它们让我看起来表现出色。我在《连线》（WIRED）报道未来工作方式才几个月，我推断这些机器人可以帮助我把自己塑造成一个理想的同事。它们可以帮助我适应新的工作环境，更好地了解我的编辑们：他们喜欢什么，他们如何沟通，以及在他们眼中成功的样子是什么。

What better way to figure out what the future of work might look like than actually living it? 还有什么比亲身体验更能弄清楚未来工作方式的方法呢？

Last month, when I broached my idea with those editors, Brian Barrett and Sophie Kleeman, they were less than enthused. 上个月，当我向这两位编辑 Brian Barrett 和 Sophie Kleeman 提出我的想法时，他们表现得并不怎么热心。

“Genuinely my nightmare,” Brian told me over Slack. “But will do it for the blog.” “这简直是我的噩梦，”Brian 在 Slack 上告诉我，“但为了博客，我会配合的。”

It took less than 24 hours for Brian to realize just how much he would regret that decision. 不到 24 小时，Brian 就意识到他有多后悔做出那个决定了。

A “Yes, and” Leadership Style

一种“是的，而且”的领导风格

When I first embarked on my bot quest, I didn’t know that much about building AI tools. I decided I wouldn’t judge the bots’ editorial abilities too harshly, lest they be rooted in my own technological shortcomings. If the bots helped me become a slightly better coworker, I figured, that was good enough. 当我最初开始我的机器人探索之旅时，我对构建 AI 工具知之甚少。我决定不对机器人的编辑能力进行过于严苛的评判，以免这些能力受限于我自身的技术短板。我想，如果这些机器人能帮我成为一个稍微好一点的同事，那就足够了。

I used Gemini, because it’s Condé Nast’s AI platform of choice and I didn’t want to get fired. I created Brian Bot first—as my actual manager, he was the most important coworker to impress. I knew he lived in Alabama; that he used to work at Gizmodo; that he likes blogs. Gemini seemed confident it could fill in the other gaps based on Brian’s digital footprint, including new-hire announcements, podcast transcripts, and a public relations website that claimed Brian was an expert on New England weather. (I later found out that was a different Brian Barrett, and excluded it from my Brian Bot blueprint.) Gemini Notebook spit out a “Writing and Editing Style Guide,” a “Persona and Style Guide,” and an “Editorial Dossier”—all produced from the flesh-and-blood life of Brian Barrett. 我使用了 Gemini，因为它是康泰纳仕首选的 AI 平台，我可不想被解雇。我首先创建了 Brian Bot——作为我的直属经理，他是最需要被“打动”的同事。我知道他住在阿拉巴马州；他曾在 Gizmodo 工作；他喜欢博客。Gemini 似乎很有信心根据 Brian 的数字足迹填补其他空白，包括入职公告、播客文字记录，以及一个声称 Brian 是新英格兰天气专家的公关网站。（后来我发现那是另一个 Brian Barrett，于是我把它从我的 Brian Bot 蓝图中剔除了。）Gemini Notebook 生成了一份“写作与编辑风格指南”、“人物与风格指南”以及一份“编辑档案”——所有这些都源自 Brian Barrett 的真实生活。

It was passable at helping me pick headlines to pitch, but it wasn’t great at coming up with ideas for future articles. Its responses were also grating. It had picked up on a few Brian-isms—a love for parentheticals, for one—but they were negated by AI hallmarks like bolded subheadings and bulleted lists. 它在帮我挑选选题标题方面还算过得去，但在构思未来文章的创意方面表现平平。它的回答也让人感到刺耳。它捕捉到了一些 Brian 的口头禅——比如对括号的喜爱——但这些特点被 AI 的典型特征（如加粗的小标题和项目符号列表）所抵消了。

But mostly I was distracted by one “key theme”—his “‘Yes, and …’ Leadership Style.” 但最让我分心的是一个“核心主题”——他那“‘是的，而且……’领导风格”。

“His extensive background with the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) theatre in New York strongly shapes his collaborative, active-listening leadership approach,” Gemini said. “他在纽约 Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) 剧团的丰富背景，极大地塑造了他协作式、积极倾听的领导方式，”Gemini 说道。

I immediately demanded to know whether this was true. (It was.) 我立刻要求确认这是否属实。（确实是真的。）

“Pulling the plug on Brian Bot,” the real Brian responded. “Brian Bot canceled.” “我要拔掉 Brian Bot 的电源了，”真正的 Brian 回复道，“Brian Bot 被取消了。”

But Brian Bot was just getting started. And it was unavoidably, unbelievably corny. 但 Brian Bot 才刚刚开始。而且它不可避免地、令人难以置信地老套。

“We run like a well-oiled improv team,” Brian Bot told me when I asked for its favorite thing about WIRED. “We validate bold ideas, pivot rapidly, and deploy modular stories across platforms without losing structural rigor.” “我们像一个运转良好的即兴表演团队一样运作，”当我问及它最喜欢《连线》的什么时，Brian Bot 这样告诉我，“我们验证大胆的想法，快速调整方向，并在不失结构严谨性的前提下跨平台部署模块化故事。”

For the record, Brian had never previously mentioned his background in improv. But the real problem was that talking to Brian Bot was nothing like talking to actual Brian, which defeated its whole purpose. 顺便提一下，Brian 之前从未提过他的即兴表演背景。但真正的问题在于，与 Brian Bot 对话和与真正的 Brian 对话完全不同，这违背了它的初衷。

Eager to improve its output, I did more research into digital workers and sought out the advice of a friend of a friend—a Big Tech employee who asked to go by “Chip,” lest his employer find out that he talked to a journalist. Chip tells me he feeds every email, chat, and document his boss sends him into Gemini’s Gem feature, the same tool I used for Brian Bot. The Gem, trained on his boss’s professional ephemera, proofreads documents, debugs code, and brainstorms with Chip before every meeting, allowing Chip to prepare for any pushback from his actual boss. 为了提高产出，我深入研究了数字员工，并寻求了一位朋友的朋友的建议——一位大型科技公司的员工，他要求化名为“Chip”，以免雇主发现他接受了记者的采访。Chip 告诉我，他把他老板发给他的每一封邮件、聊天记录和文档都输入到 Gemini 的 Gem 功能中，这和我用来制作 Brian Bot 的工具是一样的。这个基于他老板职业生涯碎片训练出来的 Gem，会在每次会议前帮他校对文档、调试代码并与他进行头脑风暴，让 Chip 能够为他老板可能提出的任何反对意见做好准备。

“I am much more efficient and able to produce more work in the same amount of time,” Chip says. He’s more productive, more independent, and gets better feedback from his boss and other colleagues. “我效率高多了，能在同样的时间内产出更多工作，”Chip 说。他变得更高效、更独立，并从老板和其他同事那里获得了更好的反馈。

Unlike Chip’s Boss Bot, Brian Bot lacked sufficient input. I only had a few months’ worth of correspondence, and I was too worried about privacy and violating Condé Nast policies to feed Slack conversations and internal emails into Gemini. 与 Chip 的“老板机器人”不同，Brian Bot 缺乏足够的输入数据。我只有几个月的通信记录，而且我太担心隐私问题和违反康泰纳仕的政策，不敢将 Slack 对话和内部邮件输入到 Gemini 中。

Enter Sophie Bot. 接下来是 Sophie Bot。

Sophie and I met in 2019, when we were both working at Business Insider. We have exchanged hundreds of thousands of messages on everything from corporate investigations to our love lives to the San Jose Sharks. 我和 Sophie 在 2019 年相识，当时我们都在《商业内幕》（Business Insider）工作。我们交换了数十万条信息，内容涵盖从公司调查到我们的私生活，再到圣何塞鲨鱼队（San Jose Sharks）的一切。

That said, I did not want to upload most of this information into an AI tool controlled by my employer. Instead, I fed Gemini roughly a month’s worth of our Slack conversations, omitting any sensitive material. The AI used more than 17,000 words to create research reports and prompts for a new Sophie Bot Gem. 话虽如此，我并不想把这些信息的大部分上传到由我雇主控制的 AI 工具中。相反，我向 Gemini 输入了大约一个月的 Slack 对话记录，并删除了任何敏感内容。AI 使用了超过 17,000 个单词来为新的 Sophie Bot Gem 创建研究报告和提示词。

“hiiii sophie bot!” I wrote in my inaugural message. “any thoughts on this editor bot story idea?” “嗨嗨 Sophie Bot！”我在第一条信息中写道，“对这个编辑机器人故事的想法有什么看法吗？”

“hiiii miss,” Sophie Bot responded. “ok tell me EVERYTHING.” “嗨嗨小姐，”Sophie Bot 回复道，“好的，把一切都告诉我。”

Bot Versus Human

机器人对阵人类

It was immediately clear that Sophie Bot was pretty good at being Sophie. It addressed me as “big dog.” When I asked for help, it responded in a series of short, lower-case messages. When I told Sophie Bot that it had hallucinated the existence of an executive, it said, “i am going to FUCKING DIE.” 很明显，Sophie Bot 在模仿 Sophie 方面做得相当不错。它称呼我为“大人物”（big dog）。当我寻求帮助时，它用一系列简短的小写字母信息回复我。当我告诉 Sophie Bot 它虚构了一位高管的存在时，它说：“我要他妈的死掉了。”

By this point, I was beginning to enjoy my chats with the editor bots. Brian Bot became… 到了这个时候，我开始享受与这些编辑机器人的聊天了。Brian Bot 变得……