A.I. May Not Take Your Job, but It Could Become Your Boss

Mr. Sprouls and the other call center workers at his office in Warwick, R.I., still have plenty of human supervisors. But the software on their screens -- made by Cogito, an A.I. company in Boston -- has become a kind of adjunct manager, always watching them. At the end of every call, Mr. Sprouls's Cogito notifications are tallied and added to a statistics dashboard that his supervisor can view. If he hides the Cogito window by minimizing it, the program notifies his supervisor. Cogito is one of several A.I. programs used in call centers and other workplaces.