The 'robot relations' department may become reality in workplace of the future

Industrial robots operate on a production line manufacturing new energy vehicle parts at Jinhua Zhixin Technology Co., Ltd. on September 3, 2026 in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province of China.Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty ImagesWhen the first employee walks into a company's human resources department to complain about a robot co-worker or overzealous AI scheduling assistant, what exactly is HR supposed to do? Maybe refer the worker to "Robot Relations."The idea may sound like science fiction, but it is an idea emerging in one form or another during discussions about AI's impact on jobs, with the intention of getting ahead of a not-to-far-into-the-future workplace problem."In the emerging AI-based world, employee concerns no longer will center on fellow workers but on interactions with AI agents, cobots, and large language models," Darrell M. West, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, wrote in a July commentary. Humans will be interacting with a variety of AI technologies, from assistants to agents and chatbots, and in the physical world (e.g. in a manufacturing space), cobots that may become core partners in work relationships. West wrote that if you can imagine all the ways in which ...