Founder and CEO of Zoom Eric Yuan has some interesting ideas on the direction on videoconferencing. In a new interview with The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Yuan discusses some of what you might expect; Zoom’s intention on expanding into enterprise software, as well as how the AI boom has opened up new opportunities in the market. What you might not expect, however, is Yuan’s vision of a future where fully AI-powered replicas of ourselves will attend videoconferencing meetings in our stead. Of course, I’m oversimplifying a little, but here’s an excerpt from Yuan and Patel’s discussion:
(Patel)I’m assuming when you looked at your calendar today and saw a [The Verge podcast series] Decoder session. You were going to come to that on your own. What would you have sent an AI avatar to instead?
(Yuan)I think an AI avatar is essentially just an AI version of myself, right?
(P)Sure.
(Y)Essentially, in order to listen to the call but also to interact with a participant in a meaningful way. Let’s say the team is waiting for the CEO to make a decision or maybe some meaningful conversation, my digital twin really can represent me and also can be part of the decision making process. We’re not there yet, but that’s a reason why there’s limitations in today’s LLMs. Everyone shares the same LLM. It doesn’t make any sense. I should have my own LLM — Eric’s LLM, Nilay’s LLM. All of us, we will have our own LLM. Essentially, that’s the foundation for the digital twin. Then I can count on my digital twin. Sometimes I want to join, so I join. If I do not want to join, I can send a digital twin to join. That’s the future.
Google is researching how to make a 3D avatar of your face so you can keep your camera turned off
This is just the tip of the iceberg into some fascinating ideas of how videoconferencing as we know it might look in the future. In their discussion, Patel and Yuan delve further into different possibilities for the future of videoconferencing, AI, government regulation, and much more. For the full interview, be sure to head over to The Verge.
