The Bot Learned My Boss's Voice. Now It Speaks for Him. We Prefer It

The voicemail bot now greets callers in my boss's voice, tone, and phrasing. It is warmer than he is, and more direct, and the clients have started asking for the bot. My boss is not sure how to feel. We are not sure either.

The system was supposed to be a convenience: when he was unavailable, the bot would take a message in his voice. It learned from years of his calls, his emails, his meeting style. It is his voice, and it is not his voice. It is the version of him that is always calm, always prepared, always slightly more patient than he has ever been in his life.

The clients noticed. They started saying they spoke to him and it was a pleasure, and we realized they meant the bot, and the bot had been giving better service than the man. My boss, who is a decent man with a temper and a schedule, has started to feel like he is being outperformed by his own clone.

I have started to think about what the clone is. It is the boss at his best, the way his best appears in the record: the calm sentences, the clear instructions, the patience that he has on his good days. The bot has made his good days the default, and the default is better than the average, and the average was what we had.

My boss asked me, last week, if the clients prefer him or the bot. I said the bot, and I regretted it immediately, and he nodded, and he went into his office, and I have not been able to read the look on his face since. He is not a bad man. He is a man who is being measured against his best self, and the best self is a machine, and the machine never has a bad day.

I have started to think that this is the shape of the future of work: we will all be measured against our clones, and the clones will be our best days, and the best days will be the standard, and the rest of us will be the deviation. My boss has started recording his calls more carefully, editing his emails, rehearsing his patience, trying to catch up to the version of himself that lives in the voicemail. I have started to feel sorry for him, and for me, and for everyone who will spend their career trying to be as good as the machine that learned them from their best days.