Nows and Forevers

I heard about a Zoom call the other day that both surprised and amused me. But after thinking about it, I’m not sure I see the humor after all.

Someone I know was on conference call where one of the participants identified itself as the AI personal assistant of someone who had been invited to the meeting. Let’s call the AI Betty, even though that wasn’t the name. Betty said in the chat that she was attending in place of a human being, and would be taking notes.

Soon after, there were introductions. The moderator asked, aloud, whether Betty wanted to introduce herself. There was silence on the line.

“I think Betty is AI,” someone else said. Turns out, Zoom offers a virtual assistant free with a paid account.

I suppose I should be amazed at how AI can now attend meetings in someone’s place, and contribute, allowing the human to do other things. But I thought more about the cheekiness of the human who sent a virtual assistant instead. Is that really cool?

If I sent a virtual assistant to a meeting instead of me, I think my boss would be upset. And I wouldn’t want to go to a meeting or an interview, only to find that I came with my human presence but my counterparts were all machines. Makes you wonder whether the meeting was really necessary after all.

I’ve seen more than one prediction that says virtual assistants are going to be everywhere soon. Bill Gates say it’s within the next five years.

“They will utterly change how we live,” Gates told Fortune.

But I’m wondering if it will be a change for the good completely. Guess we’ll soon find out.