In his statement, Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, announced an innovative future vision that revolves around integrating smart technology in the work environment. The company aims, through this vision, to provide a “digital twin” for each employee, an intelligent assistant capable of carrying out routine tasks through the Zoom Workplace platform.
The leading company in online meeting solutions seeks to empower the smart assistant to manage email correspondence, schedule meetings, summarize discussions, and perform administrative tasks. This enables employees to focus on high-value and highly beneficial activities instead of mundane tasks.
Yuan pointed out that the current corporate work model, based on a 5-day work week filled with meetings, has become inefficient. He expressed his desire to find solutions to reduce the burden of routine tasks that weigh down employees.
Yuan proposed the integration of the smart “digital twin” on the Zoom Work platform, allowing employees to delegate simple administrative tasks to it, giving them more time for creative activities and personal interactions within and outside the work environment.
Yuan mentioned that Zoom had invested in generative artificial intelligence before the emergence of the famous ChatGPT robot, with the aim of developing and using this technology to facilitate remote work. Zoom has already started offering some artificial intelligence features on the Zoom Workplace platform, such as the “Smart Companion” program that can summarize meetings.
The company aims to develop an intelligent virtual assistant based on the concept of the “digital twin” that can mimic an individual’s voice and behavior, opening the door to creating virtual replicas of employees that can participate in virtual meetings held through virtual reality technology.
Yuan affirmed that the ultimate goal is to develop highly detailed three-dimensional replicas of employees that are indistinguishable from reality. He discussed the possibility of having specialized versions of the digital twin for employees from different fields.
Yuan attributes the delay in realizing this vision to two main factors: firstly, the current models of artificial intelligence (LLMs) are not advanced enough, and secondly, the necessity of having AI models tailored to each individual based on their data and individual contexts.
However, Yuan believes that artificial intelligence technology will evolve to achieve this goal in the coming years.
Yuan believes that artificial intelligence is capable of handling many routine tasks performed by humans, but he sees that this intelligence will not be able to replace personal interactions in the workplace. He considers direct interaction still essential, such as meaningful dialogues with a colleague that require physical presence, which artificial intelligence is currently unable to perform.
