Avatar you

Out of office?

Imagine a world where your ‘digital self’ clocks on for work. At that exact moment you head out to hike a trail, master a martial art, develop your improv comedy or simply enjoy an unhurried breakfast.

In this world, your AI-trained avatar will:

• Lead your team (of avatars?)

• Attend meetings

• Produce your deliverables

• Pin blame, as required.

  
  

If you're willing to pay for the premium plug-in, your avatar could be a more politically astute version of you. Not only reinforcing your reputation as a tireless worker, but fast-tracking your ascent up the greasy pole.

No chance!

The technology to make this happen is well underway. 

• Voice cloning

• Visual avatars (Cartoonish to semi-realistic)

• Textual personas (think ChatGPT)

• Digital doubles (lifelike visual avatars).

A contextually aware and emotionally intelligent avatar is not available just yet. But for some people that might well reinforce the likeness.

For employers who are looking for value, rather than activity, or an opportunity to show who is boss, this could work well.

Not so fast

There are issues that need to be considered, for example:

• What if someone creates a better version of you and sells your capability?

• Can your avatar have a thousand jobs running in parallel?

• What are the tax implications?

• Who owns your avatar’s output?

• Will the most successful avatars be less about the value they provide and more about how much their owners can afford to spend in making their avatar more visible in the marketplace?

• What if your avatar is hacked?

• How will inheritance law handle your avatar’s posthumous use?

• Will you be obliged to provide a realistic likeness or will you be able to have some ‘digital work’ done, or even go all in and use the avatar shell of your favourite celebrity (ASAAS - Avatar shell as a service)?

  
  

I’m in

So now that the prospect of you living a double life is both possible and attractive, what do you need to do?

Train your avatar

If you have a body of content, then make it part of the training dataset. Share your perspectives verbally. Feed your aspirations into the avatar so that the recruitment consultant agent can find work that meets your professional needs.

Define what is unique about you

This is both professionally in terms of the value you deliver and also what makes you who you are as a person. You may even share traumatic experiences so that the AI can factor that into your avatar. Depending on the nature of work, these may be perceived as a unique asset or a liability. Your avatar can decide when to share.

Pay attention to your avatar

Think of it as a high stakes Tamagotchi pet that needs continual nurturing. This includes the acquisition of new skills.

Develop your physical intelligence

Now that you will be living a digital professional life, you will have more time to take your body for a spin. So you might spend more time developing your health and your physical powers. The human body has some fascinating features that are largely unused. Shoulders, for example, are not just for slumping.

What about Bob the Builder?

Clearly I have focused on knowledge worker avatars. This equally applies to tradespeople such as:

• Carpenters

• Welders

• Electricians

• Plumbers

• Hairdressers.

These people would simply require their avatars to reside in a robot. Clearly the tradesperson would need to bring something to the table that one couldn’t find in, say, a generic carpenter-bot.

Patriot gains

It is not guaranteed that this avatar-based model will come to pass. In some respects it is agentic AI applied to humans, so it seems like a natural progression. A general global decline in people may require knowledge workers to ‘parallel process’ in order to keep society’s economic wheels turning. So avatarU is aligned with current trends.

Nextgen AI

There is a question around young people entering the workplace who comprise one hundred percent potential and zero percent experience. Will employers take a chance on their associated avatars or will governments insist that employers play an active role in their development.

To conclude, one possible future of work is that our primary job may simply involve the maintenance of our avatar, a kind of meta-work. Time will tell.