--- title: Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/ author: Brian Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-08-28T10:30:00.686Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-27T22:21:34.960Z article:section: Charter og:title: Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=92ffd9e2-76a6-4775-88ad-332b024833f1&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=92ffd9e2-76a6-4775-88ad-332b024833f1&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) by [Brian Elliott](https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/) Executive-in-residence, Charter Brian Elliott is Charter's executive-in-residence and CEO of Work Forward. Aug 28, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Art: Charter by [Brian Elliott](https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/) Executive-in-residence, Charter Brian Elliott is Charter's executive-in-residence and CEO of Work Forward. Aug 28, 2026 10:30 AM UTC Tom Hanks spent four years marooned in[ “Cast Away](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/)” with one companion: a volleyball he named Wilson. He drew a face on it using his own blood, talked to it, argued with it, and when it floated off out to sea, he cried. I did too, because Hanks perfectly captured a very human impulse: give a person enough isolation, and they will turn a ball into a friend. Today the debate is whether to give your AI companions at work names or identities. Is it my “Ask HR” bot, or should I call it Wilson? It sounds like a trivial question, but it’s not. An agent, in plain terms, is software that does not just answer a question but takes an action on its own: drafting a document, updating a record, or booking a flight.[ Some executives, such as ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaport/)Okta chief people officer [Becks Port](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaport/),[ argue](https://www.okta.com/newsroom/articles/meet-your-digital-co-worker-why-ai-agents-belong-on-the-org-chart/) that agents like these should get a formal spot on the org chart and a human name, so employees treat them as teammates whose work is worth double-checking. She’s not alone. Roughly 31% of organizations already frame AI as a teammate or employee, and 23% list agents on the org chart, according to a[ recent survey](https://hbr.org/2026/05/research-why-you-shouldnt-treat-ai-agents-like-employees) of more than 1,200 managers by BCG. But giving agents names or spots on the org chart brings new risks. In the[ same study](https://hbr.org/2026/05/research-why-you-shouldnt-treat-ai-agents-like-employees), managers who reviewed identical error-filled documents caught about 18% fewer errors when they were told it came from an "AI employee" rather than an "AI tool." They were also 44% more likely to forward that error-filled work to colleagues, and took on less responsibility, assigning more blame to "the technology" for not catching the mistakes. The effects were highest at companies that were already treating agents like staff. Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). Two decisions hide inside the phrase "agents on the org chart." The first is whether an agent gets a clear owner and a defined job. The second is whether it gets a human name. Based on what we know today, doing the first is a good idea, while the second appears to erode accountability. **Put agents on the chart, but make ownership clear** Let’s start with why this is happening in the first place.[ The conversation about agents on org charts is related to a shift taking place in many companies, from thinking about AI as a boost for individual productivity to thinking how agents interact with teams. Julie Bedard](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcbedard/), a managing director at BCG and a co-author of the study, tells me companies that chase individual productivity continue to come up short. "There's a difference between personal productivity and dramatic, outcome-based workflow reinvention," she told me. The real gains arrive when you take team or organization-wide workflows and figure out how AI can reduce repetitive work or improve a process. That, she points out, is when a single agent needs "the context of more than one job," and when ownership gets complicated. Take the popular example we’ve all heard about the "Ask HR" agent that fields benefits questions, updates personnel records or submits a PTO request for employees. Even that agent is hardly set-and-forget, Bedard warns. It needs written policy underneath it, a way to catch the agent’s mistakes, and limits to what it can do. Setting all of that up requires cooperation across technology teams and support functions, but there also has to be accountability for how the agent performs. Port’s answer is to split that accountability along clear lines. Engineering owns the plumbing and technical guardrails, which prevent the agent from booking a first-class flight to London when an employee asked about paid parental leave. The travel team owns travel policies, including which issues should be escalated to which approvers. Port’s HR team owns policy content and the harder calls an agent should refuse, such as to make a hiring decision. That division lines up with what Anthropic found when building[ human-agent teams](https://claude.com/blog/building-effective-human-agent-teams) of its own. In the teams that work best, agents must have a clear role, access to written context from the team, and goals set by a human owner.[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristennicoleswanson/)An agent cannot act on what nobody wrote down, says [Kristen Swanson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristennicoleswanson/), who [leads education and research programs](https://www.charterworks.com/inside-how-anthropic-teaches-effective-ai-use/) at Anthropic, so the in-our-heads way most teams operate has to get written down first. Give the agent an owner, a scope, and a documented job, and you have something you can hold accountable. Just don’t give it a name. **The name is where it goes wrong** Port has understandable reasons for naming agents. At Okta, the identity management and security company, "we just organically think about agents as another identity type," she says, no different from an employee who needs credentials. A name, she believes, does two useful things. It alleviates anxiety, for one: "It's not, ‘The robots are coming for our jobs.’ It's, ‘We've got a teammate who is doing a different job,’” says Port. It also restores healthy doubt. People extend a strange faith to a faceless system, she says, but by giving it a name, they may be more likely to question it like a colleague. Bedard's worry is that her research shows the opposite is happening. When her study gave the agent a name or a seat on the chart, people did not use the agent more. But they did send content to a manager for review more often, while they missed more errors themselves. The name adds a new layer of misplaced trust on top of one we already have. Managers, Bedard says, are mostly "not equipped to handle the anxiety and the grief that comes with change," and believes naming the agent sharpens that reaction. One worker in her study put it plainly: the fastest way to feel like you are about to lose your job is to watch the thing doing part of it get a name and a seat on the org chart. So go ahead and put the agent on the org chart with ownership split cleanly between relevant teams. If you must name it, make the name dull as dirt and as descriptive as possible. (Keep it “HR Answer Bot,” not “Wilson.”) And remember, there’s a broader issue at play here. As Bedard points out, giving agents human names compounds [growing fears](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/18/young-adults-in-the-us-are-increasingly-wary-of-ai-concerned-it-will-take-jobs/?utm%5Fsource=AdaptiveMailer&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=26.08.18%20Young%20adults%20and%20AI%20short%20read&org=982&lvl=100&ite=18306&lea=5395701&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0DQm00000EOaOrMAL&utm%5Fsource=DO+NOT+EMAIL+-+Full+list&utm%5Fcampaign=47959082d8-EMAIL%5FCAMPAIGN%5F2026%5F08%5F20%5F06%5F29&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fterm=0%5F-47959082d8-1383480326) about the consequences of AI—on our jobs, yes, but also on our identities as humans. Many people already feel this threat, concerned that leaders see agents as effective replacements for human creativity and judgement. Giving agents a human-like name is unlikely to help. _Brian Elliott is Charter’s executive-in-residence. He also serves as a senior advisor to BCG, but receives no compensation for sharing the firm’s research._ --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/)  ### How Leaders Can 'Eat Risk' With AI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-leaders-can-eat-risk-with-ai/) [Open article: How to Recruit, Hire, and Develop Entry-Level Talent](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-recruit-hire-and-develop-entry-level-talent/)  ### How to Recruit, Hire, and Develop Entry-Level Talent [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-recruit-hire-and-develop-entry-level-talent/) [Open article: How to Maintain the ‘Heartbeat of Work’ in the Age of Ai](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-maintain-the-heartbeat-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/)  ### How to Maintain the ‘Heartbeat of Work’ in the Age of Ai [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-maintain-the-heartbeat-of-work-in-the-age-of-ai/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-you-shouldn-t-give-ai-agents-a-name/"},"headline":"Why You Shouldn’t Give AI Agents a Name","datePublished":"2026-08-28T10:30:00.686Z","dateModified":"2026-08-27T22:21:34.960Z","description":"For AI agents, what’s in a name? 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