Would your team or clients know if it wasn’t you speaking?
Researchers tried to answer that question at Zapier.
Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj Choudhury and his colleagues built something they called the “Wade Bot,” an AI trained on CEO Wade Foster’s Slack messages, emails, and public statements. It was designed to write like him.
Then they ran a test.
Employees submitted questions. Both the real Foster and the Wade Bot replied. The team was asked to guess which answers came from the CEO.
They got it right 59% of the time.
But there is more...
When people thought a message was written by AI, they rated it as less helpful, even when the real CEO wrote it.
It’s an important reminder that perception matters.
We don’t just evaluate the message we react to who we think is behind it.
Choudhury’s team was exploring what happens when AI starts to “stand in” for us: communicating, attending meetings, maybe even negotiating.
It’s already happening.
How long does it take to lose client's trust or employee's respect?
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Would your team or clients know if it wasn’t you speaking?
Researchers tried to answer that question at Zapier.
Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj Choudhury and his colleagues built something they called the “Wade Bot,” an AI trained on CEO Wade Foster’s Slack messages, emails, and public statements. It was designed to write like him.
Then they ran a test.
Employees submitted questions. Both the real Foster and the Wade Bot replied. The team was asked to guess which answers came from the CEO.
They got it right 59% of the time.
But there is more...
When people thought a message was written by AI, they rated it as less helpful, even when the real CEO wrote it.
It’s an important reminder that perception matters.
We don’t just evaluate the message we react to who we think is behind it.
Choudhury’s team was exploring what happens when AI starts to “stand in” for us: communicating, attending meetings, maybe even negotiating.
It’s already happening.
How long does it take to lose client's trust or employee's respect?
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4