Robocolleague

(title:) Robocolleague: Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers

With AI making an entrance in the cubicles at the workplace, some office workers are warming up to their robo-colleagues by giving them female names: back-end staff for ANZ bank in Bangalore call their robo-colleague Lakshmi, while Nippon Life Insurance Company in Japan addresses them as robomi-chan, or "pretty little robot".

The nine-to-five routine could certainly be sweetened by a robocolleague to sweat your boring stuff. But will they get the teas in?

That is leading Gartner to predict that by 2026, 100 million workers will have what the firm calls a “robo-colleague,” a synthetic virtual assistant designed to help make users more productive and efficient.