Meetings may soon be a thing of the past.
Zoom’s CEO wants to develop “digital twin technology” to allow employees to bring artificially intelligent versions of themselves into meetings and other time-consuming parts of their workday.
“You can send a digital version of yourself to join in and go to the beach,” Eric Yuan said. He told The Verge.
A “digital twin” is essentially a deepfake version of yourself that can attend your meetings and even make decisions on your behalf.
The 54-year-old CEO and his team at the video conferencing platform are working to use AI to “fully automate” this aspect of the job.
“Today, we spend a lot of time making calls, attending meetings, sending emails, deleting spam, and replying to text messages, and we’re still very busy,” Yuan said.
He added: “You don’t need to spend so much time on it. [in meetings]”You don’t need to be on five or six Zoom calls every day. AI can make that possible.”
Yuan suggested that offloading the “boring” parts of work to AI could bring about a big change in work-life balance and potentially reduce working hours.
“You and I can have more time to interact in person, but it may not be for work. It may be for other things. Why do we need to work five days a week? In the future, it’s going to be four or three days a week,” he said.
“Why not spend more time with your family? Why not focus on something more creative, reclaim your time, give back to your community, give back to society and help others?”
However, all of this depends on advances in AI and how long it takes to get there.
“Right now, I think the biggest problem is that AI is not there yet. It’s going to take some time,” Yuan said. “Let’s say AI is ready five or six years from now. It will probably help with 90% of the work, but in terms of real-time interaction, today you and I are having an online conversation.”
“So, I can send you my digital version, and you can send me your digital version.”
However, Yuan noted that the one thing AI can’t replace is face-to-face meetings and connections.
“Do you think I’m going to stop by your office and give you a hug and shake your hand? I don’t think AI can replace that,” he says. “We still need that face-to-face interaction. It’s so important. Let’s say you and I are sitting together at your local Starbucks and we’re having a really intimate conversation. AI can’t do that.”
This is not the first example of a digital twin.
Holistic health advocate Deepak Chopra, 77, is one of several people who have already digitally “cloned” themselves.
DelphiBilled as the world’s first digital cloning platform, the technology uses data from podcasts, videos, PDFs and other content to create a clone that can mimic the way you think and speak, and can be developed in as little as an hour.
Video clones already exist in Japan, thanks to one company. Alternative AI It creates a very realistic clone so that it appears annoyed when you don’t respond in chat.
Other companies, Coach Box AIcreates digital clones that provide life and business coaching based on the thoughts of real people.
