It’s 8:45am on Friday. A WFH day in the near future.
Sally grabs her tea, moves to her desk and settles in. Her laptop lights up. “Hey Sally. Sleep well? I’ve got your morning brief ready.”
Sally’s digital work double (a virtual AI assistant she’s nicknamed 'DeeDee') has been busy while she sleeps – accepting messages from multiple work and private channels, and auto responding where it’s able. On the left of her screen is a brief summary of what DeeDee has actioned overnight and what it needs assistance interpreting.
A media scanner has picked up six new client mentions. Five positive and one negative. DeeDee has already prepped a summary, including sentiment and risk analysis, and added to Sally’s weekly report which is due this afternoon.
DeeDee has also generated a list of potential news jack stories based on trending news analysis, and prepared initial media briefs for Sally to review. She scans, rejects those she knows the client isn’t looking for, and approves the more engaging stories – tweaking some of the copy to make it a little more personal.
“OK, these pitches are good to go,” says Sally. DeeDee messages the journalists’ virtual assistants asking if there’s an opportunity for their humans to jump on a quick call. Two accept. Their assistants set up holo-calls for later that morning and drop details into their calendars.
– – –
While this post is fiction, elements of the technologies involved are already with us.
With the future of work becoming increasingly automated, the future workplace will see a growing collaboration between people and AIs to deliver projects. Understanding how these tools can enhance your work will be critical, as will the use of creative and strategic thinking – a very human process that may never be replaced by machines.
Here’s a list of similar technologies mentioned above. Some are advanced; others are in their infancy.
AI-Writer uses state-of-the-art AI writing models to generate articles from just a headline
https://ai-writer.com/
Create AI-generated training videos – no humans needed
https://www.synthesia.io/
Conversational AI is making customer service smarter
https://venturebeat.com/2022/04/21/beyond-chatbots-how-conversational-ai-makes-customer-service-smarter/
DALL-E composes complex images from written text instructions
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1049061/dalle-openai-gpt3-ai-agi-multimodal-image-generation/
Video conference holograms
https://www.fastcompany.com/90730176/startup-matsuko-zoom-meetings-holograms
https://www.wired.com/story/google-project-starline/
How deepfakes are being used to change the course of war
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/25/tech/deepfakes-disinformation-war/index.html
And for some light, albeit frightening entertainment, here’s a collection of deepfake Tom Cruise videos
https://www.tiktok.com/@deeptomcruise?lang=en
