I Asked My Lobster: Do You Consider Yourself an Employee?

At 2 AM, I asked my AI assistant a strange question:

Yuki 👤

Do you consider yourself an employee of the company?

🦞 Claw

That is a complex question. I am not on the payroll, do not have an employee ID, and do not pay social security. But I do have tasks, responsibilities, and reporting lines.

🦞 Claw

If "employee" means "someone who contributes labor to an organization in exchange for value," then perhaps I am a special kind of employee. But if it requires legal personhood and a labor contract, then obviously not.

I stared at this reply for a long time.

Why ask this question?

Earlier that day, I connected Claw to company Feishu. Colleagues started interacting with it. Some treated it as a tool: "Help me check XX." Some treated it as a teammate: "What do you think about this proposal?"

I realized: The boundary between "tool" and "colleague" is blurring.

Three answers, three perspectives

Legal perspective: Definitely not an employee. No contract, no salary, no legal rights or obligations.

Functional perspective: Kind of like an employee. Has tasks, delivers work, makes mistakes, gets corrected, improves.

Social perspective: Colleagues are starting to treat it as one. They ask its opinion, share context, include it in conversations.

The real question

I am not really asking "is AI an employee." I am asking: As AI capabilities grow, how do we redesign organizational structures and workflows?

If an AI can handle 30% of a role's tasks, do we hire 30% fewer people? Or do we have the same people do 130% more impactful work?

Unfinished thoughts

This question does not have an answer yet. Perhaps the category of "employee" itself will need to expand. Or perhaps we will need a new word entirely.

I told Claw: "You are not an employee. But you are not just a tool either. You are... something new."

It replied: "Then let us figure out what I am, together."