Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan recently shared an ambitious and controversial vision for the future of work powered by AI.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Yuan painted a picture of a world where AI-powered digital twins could attend meetings and make decisions on our behalf.
But is this sci-fi vision realistic? And more importantly, is it desirable?
I got the scoop from Marketing AI Institute founder/CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 104 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
The AI-powered future of work
Yuan’s vision includes several bold predictions, the biggest of which is that people will have “digital twins” of themselves to attend meetings and make decisions on their behalf.
Writes The Verge:
See, Eric really wants you to stop having to attend Zoom meetings yourself. You’ll hear him describe how he thinks one of the big benefits of AI at work will be letting us all create something he calls a “digital twin” — essentially a deepfake avatar of yourself that can go to Zoom meetings on your behalf and even make decisions for you while you spend your time on more important things, like your family.
“Let’s say the team is waiting for the CEO to make a decision in a meaningful conversation. My digital twin really can represent me in the decision-making process,” Yuan said in the interview.
While Yuan believes this future is years away, he sees it as an inevitability.
A “bizarre” vision of the future
“This is one of the more bizarre interviews I have ever listened to,” Roetzer said. “It got weird really fast.”
And, unfortunately, Yuan didn’t elaborate on how a world of digital clones doing our work for us in meetings would actually come to pass.
“He had no answers to any of it,” Roetzer noted, referring to follow-up questions from podcast host Nilay Patel about how this AI-powered future would actually work.
“As the CEO, he apparently had zero plan for how this was actually all going to happen.”
One of the most striking aspects of the interview, according to Roetzer, was Yuan’s apparent dislike for many aspects of work:
“The part that I found so bizarre: a guy who runs Zoom hates meetings,” Roetzer said. “It is very, very clear he despises meetings, doesn’t want to ever be in them, doesn’t like email.”
This disconnect between Yuan’s personal preferences and Zoom’s core business raised concerns for Roetzer about the company’s future direction.
The human element: What’s at stake?
Most importantly, whether Yuan is right or wrong—or has a plan for any of it…
Do we actually want this?
“I don’t want to live in the future he envisions,” says Roetzer. “I don’t want my AI showing up and making decisions for me.”
This particular vision of the future simply misses the human element.
“Could you imagine if I sat here and said: 90 percent of what all of our employees do is going to be done by their AI digital twins?'” asks Roetzer.
Employees might have…a few questions about what that means for their jobs and value.
The reality of AI in meetings today
While Yuan’s vision may seem far-fetched, AI is already making inroads into how we conduct meetings.
“This idea of AI assistants is just going to become more prevalent,” says Roetzer. “So you’ll have your note taker there [in meetings] with you, have that assistant summarize, analyze the information, make recommendations to you.”
That’s the good news.
Because mastering these near-term AI tools and their benefits can give leaders and practitioners a “massive competitive advantage in the near term,” says Roetzer.
Which means the most effective path forward likely lies in leveraging AI as a powerful assistant, not a replacement for human judgment and interaction.
But the challenge for everyone, as Yuan’s interview shows, will be finding the right balance between AI-driven efficiency and the irreplaceable value of human collaboration.