Managing Future Digital Employees

Business bots will evolve into intelligent agents working at our companies, so we’ll need to manage them

Imagine this: You’re a sales rep that travels worldwide. You get an email from an important customer who wants to see you immediately to discuss making a large purchase that will finally move the needle for your business. You know that if you show up, it’s a done deal. You contact your company’s travel bot to approve travel.

The bot sees that your travel budget is exceeded, but it also knows the rules on how to get an exception for you. It can contact your boss to get an exception to the rules. The bot reaches out to your boss via a chat message and your boss approves the exception. The bot approves the transaction and everything moves forward. As an added benefit, the bot keeps track of each detail of its activity by writing the transaction to the blockchain as a permanent record of the decision process.

When audit time comes around, the travel accounts are out of balance. The company notices that overspending occurred. But, what happened in the decision chain? They reference the transaction that the bot was involved in, any automated decision making, and any associated human decisions on the blockchain-enabled solution. So, they were able to audit a bot’s actions, what steps were taken, and when.

This simple scenario represents something close to today’s world. In the future, these bots will become…