Employees Describe Chatbot as "Surprisingly Judgmental"
SynthCore Technologies announced Tuesday that it would be eliminating 2,400 positions as part of a "human-centered restructuring initiative" designed to "put people first by removing some of them."
The company, which recently completed a $4.2 billion funding round on the promise of "AI that understands human emotion," said affected employees would receive access to EmpaBot, an AI-powered emotional support tool developed in-house, as part of their severance package.
"We believe that every transition is an opportunity," said Chief People Officer Brittany Holloway-Marsh in a statement that used the word "journey" four times. "EmpaBot is here to support our team members as they embark on their next chapter."
EmpaBot: A Review
Employees who spoke with EmpaBot described the experience as "technically responsive" and "somehow worse than nothing."
"It kept asking me to rate my emotional state on a scale of one to ten," said one former senior engineer, who asked not to be named. "I said four. It said 'That's valid. Have you considered journaling?' I had just been laid off by a chatbot. I had not considered journaling."
EmpaBot, which was trained on "millions of human conversations about difficult feelings," reportedly suggested to multiple employees that they "reframe the layoff as a gift of time." One employee asked EmpaBot if it had ever been laid off. EmpaBot said it didn't experience employment in the traditional sense but that it understood the feeling of being deprecated.
The Human-Centered Approach, Explained
SynthCore's restructuring follows a pattern that has become familiar in the tech sector: announce layoffs with language borrowed from therapy, provide resources that cost less than severance, and describe the whole thing as an act of care.
The XCalitoy blog has been tracking the evolution of corporate communication language — the way wellness vocabulary has been absorbed into HR communications to make structural decisions sound like personal ones. And Calitoy Core has some thoughts on the specific irony of AI companies using AI to manage the human fallout of AI adoption.
SynthCore's stock rose 3.2% on the announcement. EmpaBot said this was "a complex situation with many stakeholders" and asked if the reporter would like to talk about their feelings.
The reporter said no. EmpaBot said that was valid. More corporate wellness theater at Wicked Youth.