Kasra Dash: Today I am joined with James Dooley and we are talking about what AI employees actually are, otherwise known as artificial intelligence employees. James Dooley, take it away.

James Dooley: An AI employee is essentially an artificial intelligence version of a staff member. For years people have outsourced work to virtual assistants in places like the Philippines or South Africa. AI employees are the modern alternative. Most virtual assistants are hired to complete low-level, rinse and repeat tasks. Artificial intelligence can now do a lot of that work instead.

We have talked for weeks about when AI employees make sense, when virtual assistants still make sense and when in-house staff are better. There are arguments on both sides. What are your initial thoughts on AI employees?

Kasra Dash: At first I was sceptical. AI does hallucinate, it lies and it makes things up. But where I got won over is that you can feed AI employees all your company information. If you have 5,000 emails from old quotes and client conversations, you can give all of that to the AI. It builds memory.

When it builds that memory, it becomes superpowered. So if you are a solar panel installation company and you feed in the last 500 quotations, the AI employee will understand exactly how many panels a four-bedroom semi-detached house needs. It can process the calculations, the usage and the context. It might even recommend an EV charger.

The accuracy depends on the quality of the information you give it. One thing both of us agree on is that AI employees are not ready straight out of the box, no matter how the ads make it look.

James Dooley: Exactly. There is a race right now between brands trying to become the best AI employee platform. If anyone wants to explore them, check the link in the description. We compare the current leaders in the space.

I have had so many business owners reach out. We generate them a lot of leads every day. Then they hit a follow-up bottleneck. When you price a job, whether solar panels or flooring, you need photos, measurements, budgets and timelines. That information usually requires a lot of back-and-forth.

An AI employee can handle all of that. When someone enquires on your website, the AI can ask the questions, gather the information and send a complete package to the estimator. It saves time and makes the estimators more efficient because they only deal with qualified enquiries.

That is the part I like. AI employees are strong for rinse-and-repeat tasks. Some people let AI run wild on social media and you can instantly see the AI fingerprints like the long dashes and the unnatural tone. So front-facing AI still needs care. There is a lot for LLMs to learn.

But I am a big believer in outsourcing repetitive tasks to AI employees while humans handle the high-level work.

Kasra Dash: We are doing a full follow-up video on the best AI employees and another on whether they are actually worth it. The links will be in the description.