How deeply entwined will your personal AI (copilot) become in every aspect of your personal and business life?
Probably much more than you think. Likely more than any human you know.
My guess is that you’ll ultimately give your personal AI assistant access to your phone calls, emails, conversations, cameras... every aspect, of every moment, of your day.
Our personal AIs will serve (and we may become dependent upon them) as our cognitive collaborators, our on-demand researcher, our consigliere, our coaches... giving us advice on any and all topics that require unbiased wisdom.
They’ll support us in our creative tasks, help us in tracking torrents of data, remind us of someone’s name and what we said to them last week. They’ll help us in brainstorming new ideas and assist us in tackling previously untenable challenges.
The current concept of an AI collaborator has been termed by some as a “copilot.” The first time I heard the term copilot with reference to AI was when I was having dinner with Reid Hoffman in late 2022. Hoffman is the Co-Founder and past Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, a partner at Greylock Partners and a Co-Founder of Inflection AI.
As I’ve mentioned previously, he predicts that every profession will have an AI copilot by 2028. Here’s what he told me over dinner: “No matter what profession you are, doctor, lawyer, or CEO a copilot will become something between useful and essential. These copilots will accelerate our creativity and take care of the mundane aspects of our jobs.”
I think it will go much further, and in today’s blog, I want to share my own vision for our future AI collaborators—how we will integrate them in both our personal and professional lives.
Let’s dive in…
NOTE: The power of AI to augment humans, increase our productivity, and ultimately reinvent society is one of the core topics I’ll be diving into at my upcoming Abundance Summit in March.
Future AI Copilots
When I think of having my own copilot, my mind turns to some version of JARVIS—minus the fusion power source and flying suit.
And yes, I’m obviously infatuated with the Iron Man universe.
So, what might such a copilot look like? And how does it get to know you well enough to be useful in both your personal and professional world?
On the personal front, I imagine each of us having a copilot that knows us intimately, better than your spouse or best friend, and is specifically trained and molded to our desires. It knows everyone you’ve ever met and will remember everyone you’ve forgotten. It knows your friend’s birthday, and the birthdays of their kids. It can remind you of the last time you met with someone, and even what you discussed.
And it knows your preferences, all of your preferences, and can probably name them better than you can.
So how does your copilot get to know you so well? By effectively spying on you 24 x 7 (with your permission of course!). Ultimately, I believe, you’ll give your copilot full access to read your emails, and listen to your phone calls and your conversations. If you’re wearing augmented reality glasses with rear-facing cameras, your copilot can even follow your eyes and know what you’re looking at, and how long you focus on anything in particular.
For example, if you’re shopping for a sports jacket, your copilot will know that you lingered an extra few milliseconds on one particular jacket pattern over another, indicating interest in that design.
Worried about privacy?
Sure, we all are, but then again do you really think we have true privacy in this day and age? I believe that your copilot will be as secure as Google (which has access to all your searches), or Microsoft (which has access to what you’re writing and your ChatGPT prompts), or Alexa (which is listening to all of your bedroom conversations).
On the professional front, your copilot will have an extraordinary expertise in whatever profession you’ve chosen.
That professional expertise won’t be equivalent to what you learned in school, or what you experienced during your professional career. It will be vastly greater. It’s very likely that your copilot will encompass the experience and knowledge held by thousands or millions of your colleagues.
On September 21, 2023, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate VP and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft put out a blog announcing Microsoft Copilot as your “everyday AI companion,” commandeering the term for their own use and beginning the journey towards the vision described above.
In his blog, Mehdi said:
“With the convergence of chat interfaces and large language models you can now ask for what you want in natural language and the technology is smart enough to answer, create it or take action. At Microsoft, we think about this as having a copilot to help navigate any task. We have been building AI-powered copilots into our most used and loved products – making coding more efficient with GitHub, transforming productivity at work with Microsoft 365, redefining search with Bing and Edge and delivering contextual value that works across your apps and PC with Windows.”
Why This Matters
So, what will all this mean to professionals in the future? What will AI-human collaboration look like in the near-term and in the decade ahead?
As we stand on the cusp of this transformative era, it's imperative to recognize the profound implications this synergy between humans and AI will have across diverse professions.
AI copilots are set to become integral partners in our professional journeys, reshaping how we work, think, and create. Their integration into our lives will redefine the very nature of expertise and productivity.
This evolution is not a distant fantasy—it's unfolding right before our eyes.
Over the next few blogs in this Age of Abundance series, we’ll look at concrete professions where AI and AI-human collaboration will both play an outsized role over the next 4 years.