Zoom has a vision for the future of work: clone wars
Nilay Patel’s lengthy interview in The Verge with Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan reveals the latter’s “sci-fi” vision for the future of corporate software, one where managers create and manage clones of themselves that attend video conferencing meetings.
Patel says that after that revelation, his plans for the interview changed, and he decided to focus mainly on that topic. A way to integrate AI and digital twins into Zoom’s platform that could significantly change the way people work and interact in the future, and that starts with creating digital twins, essentially deepfaked avatars of oneself that can attend Zoom meetings, even making decisions and carrying out tasks, such as managing their agenda, while they are busy with other activities, professional or personal.
Such a scenario obviously raises questions about the role of humans in the workplace, and how much work will be automated and on what basis. During the interview, concerns are addressed about how to trust clones created using generative artificial intelligence, and how to ensure that they remain correctly aligned and synchronized with the original person in their knowledge of various topics. Yuan acknowledges these challenges and talks about them as though the technology is already in development or available, but is open to discussing the potential benefits and…
