AI Avatars Will Soon Attend Your Work Meetings, Claims Tech CEO

A tech CEO has said that by the end of this year, artificial intelligence (AI) avatars will be able to attend work meetings for you. Sam Liang, who is the chief executive of Otter, said that these avatars will be able to act, talk and solve problems like the worker on which they are based. Mr Liang said he attends at least 10 meetings every day, so came up with a tech-driven solution for the problem.

"A prototype can be made working later this year," Mr Liang told Business Insider.

"AI models are generally trained using a set of data to get them to behave in human-like ways. AI avatars should be trained on the recorded meeting notes and voice data of the specific people they're trying to replicate, so that they can act and converse exactly like them. Once they have enough information, the avatars (in theory) will be able to speak in the cadence of individual workers, participate in conversations, and answer questions based on the worker's unique perspectives," he added.

In trials conducted by Mr Liang's company, the AI avatars were able to answer 90 per cent of the questions they faced during meeting. "When it got stuck on the remaining 10%, the questions were sent to the human worker with a note saying, 'Hey, I don't know how to answer this question - can you help me?'" he added.

Mr Liang said these AI avatars will save employees' time and boost their productivity. By sending these bots to meetings on customer support, sales and team status updates, employees can utilise the extra hours in their day to focus on more creative tasks and, in turn, make companies more money.

The toughest part is to add emotional intelligence to an AI persona so that it can participate in a meeting in productive ways - raise its voice when needed, and remain calm when required.

This is yet another stride in the field of AI, which is fast becoming an integral part of the global landscape, transforming how businesses operate.

But there are some people and organisations that are warning against the rapid proliferation of AI.

The Future of Life Institute, a non-profit aimed at reducing catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence, made headlines in March 2023 when it released an open letter calling for a six-month pause on the training of AI systems more powerful than OpenAI's GPT-4. It warned that AI labs have been "locked in an out-of-control race" to develop "powerful digital minds that no one - not even their creators - can understand, predict, or reliably control.

It also said that developing ever-more powerful AI will also risk eliminating jobs to a point where it may be impossible for humans to simply learn new skills and enter other industries.

Another emerging threat that politicians and tech leaders must guard against is the possibility of AI becoming so powerful that it becomes a threat to humanity.