How AI will change your life at work and home – and even might create your digital twin

Wu Chen: "AI is an efficient machine." (Image by Wix AI)

By HAN VU

Global Business Journalism reporter

In the next 25 years, humans will have to reinvent their work lives and career trajectories. Companies will look for ways to integrate human creativity into labor systems dominated by artificial intelligence. And governments will be able to simulate their economies via virtual reality to gauge the potential impact of new policy proposals.

Science fiction has become human reality. Wu Chen, a columnist for the Economic Observer and author of a trilogy on innovation and technology, sees the world moving toward a dichotomy where machines handle tasks that require predictable, repeatable work, leaving humans to handle the messier, unscripted problems no algorithm can anticipate.

“AI is an efficient machine,” Wu told students in the Global Business Journalism program at Tsinghua University on Sept. 22. “We [humans] deal with inefficiency.”

If AI is the perfect efficiency machine, humans must adapt to remain viable in the mid-21^st century workplace, Wu said.

“Human value will be found in problem solving, dealing with new environments, new challenges, things that people haven’t encountered,” Wu he told students in the “Hot Topics in the Global Economy” course.

Survival demands a reinvention of the traditional career arc.

 “The cycle of study, work, retirement is over,” he declared. “Now, every five years, you change yourself. You move into a new industry.”

AI "agents" will become ubiquitous in homes and offices in coming years, Wu predicts. (Image by Wix AI)

Wu says the world is entering the third wave in the history of digital technology: first websites, then apps, and now AI “agents.” These new AI systems, Wu said, will soon become ubiquitous.

 “In the near future, everyone will have a universal, personal agent, a smart assistant you can trust with your data,” he predicted.

That shift, he argued, guarantees digital abundance. Education and information, once scarce, will flow freely. Professors may create digital twins of themselves to teach thousands worldwide. Entire economies could be simulated in virtual reality before policies are enacted.

Management shifts of the first two eras will be turbocharged by AI. Organizational structures, flattened even more by AI, will no longer reward the performance of unproductive “pseudo-work” such as emailing, meetings and reports that once signaled productivity, he said. To survive, workers will need to concentrate on what is harder to automate: creativity, adaptability and trust.

“What machines can replace is communication for alignment,” Wu said. “What humans must build is communication for trust.”

The driver of this new world is not computing power or clever algorithms but data itself. Companies and countries are engaged in a race to take advantage of the wealth of data collected in the third wave of modern communication technology. At stake: profits, power and control.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing is data,” Wu said. “Whoever can become the ultimate information state. That is the real prize.”

China is hoping to create a national genome bank. (Image by Wix AI)

China, he said, is hoping to become the "ultimate information state.” The government cites the positive implications, including the potential creation of a national genome bank holding data from a billion people, positioning it as a huge asset for genetic and rare disease research. Yet, Wu warned of a darker side globally: the risk of governments, corporations or platforms misusing such information.

“We need mechanisms to help individuals fight with platforms, with big corporations, with big government,” he said.

Amid gloomy predictions of AI-related job losses, Wu sees potential for workers to adapt and live happier, healthier, less-stressful lives. If artificial intelligence truly delivers productivity gains, he said, it could liberate people to spend less time at their desks.

“People will work less and find more things they are passionate about,” he predicted.