Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom, understands the desire to avoid endless meetings, and he’s addressing this by developing an AI avatar, or "digital twin," to handle such tasks so individuals can enjoy their lives. Yuan discussed with The Verge the idea of leveraging Zoom Workplace to manage one's entire schedule, allowing users to leave Zoom Workplace to complete most of their work autonomously.
Yuan envisions a future where your digital twin can attend business meetings on your behalf, allowing you to relax at the beach, while also managing emails and phone calls. He emphasized that today's workday involves numerous tasks like phone calls, meetings, and email management, which could be fully automated using AI and Zoom Workplace.
Yuan predicts that AI will take over 90% of meetings, potentially leading to a three-day workweek. This could revolutionize the current scenario where brain activity diminishes due to continuous video calls. In this envisioned future, workers would need to attend only a fraction of the meetings they do today, freeing up time for more engaging activities.
He elaborated that within five to six years, AI advancements could handle 90% of the workload, reducing the need for multiple daily Zoom calls. This would enable workers to enjoy more personal and creative pursuits and spend more time in face-to-face interactions with family and community, rather than being confined to work routines.
Yuan also hinted at the development of Zoom’s digital twin technology, starting as a voice assistant and evolving into more immersive forms like Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3. Eventually, these digital twins could become indistinguishable from real people, with multiple versions tailored for different scenarios, such as a more confident avatar for sales meetings.
Acknowledging that the technology is still in its early stages, Yuan conceded that the perfect AI isn’t yet available and will require more time to develop fully.
His vision opens up a future where AI takes over mundane tasks, giving people their time back to focus on more meaningful activities.
Unfortunately, for those eager for this shift, full implementation of digital twin technology might still be a long way off [citation:1].