The AI promise was automation. The reality? Managing digital workers
Por Chong Ming Lee,Mandy Zuo — South China Morning Post – News feed
Advertisement Artificial intelligence Tech Big Tech In Focus The AI promise was automation. The reality? Managing digital workers
As businesses race to build AI workforces, supervising them is becoming the next big challenge
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Chong Ming Lee in Hong Kong and Mandy Zuo in Shanghai Published: 10:00pm, 18 Oct 2026 Updated: 10:14pm, 18 Oct 2026
When artificial intelligence agents first arrived, they came with a tantalising promise: autonomous “digital workers” that would finally free humans from corporate drudgery. As businesses across Asia are discovering, however, the reality is quite the opposite – more work, new friction and a whole new layer of management.
When Xiao Mengjie, an AI product marketing manager at a Big Tech firm in Shanghai, recently assigned two AI agents what she described as a simple task, she expected efficiency. Instead, she got corporate gridlock.
Rather than dividing the workload, her agent and her supervisor’s agent locked in a prolonged discussion over responsibilities, debating who should verify details and which one should take ownership of different tasks, in a spectacle not unlike the human bureaucracy they had been hired to replace.
“It became very formal and cumbersome,” Xiao said. “Agents can create communication overhead too.”
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