Cloned Communications: Will digital twins see nomadic working go mainstream?

Imagine a world where your avatar attends work for you. That may sound like something straight out of the Apple TV show ‘Severance’ but it’s fast becoming a possibility that could make digital nomads of us all. The concept of a ‘digital twin’ is well established in manufacturing where it’s used to model and test a digital version of a real-world physical object. But in a communications context, a digital twin replicates a human subject, effectively mirroring a person online by utilising AI.

This virtual clone was an idea recently mooted by Zoom CEO, Eric Yuan. He foresees a future where data sets are trained using your workplace self, so that the documents you use or create and processes you use are combined with a digital representation of your face and voice by AI to accurately represent you. This digital twin can then attend business meetings online on your behalf but why stop there? A digital version of you could even attend multiple events simultaneously, significantly improving productivity, and even making decisions as you would make them before reporting back to you.

It's a future that is looking increasingly likely with the emergence of Agentic AI. An autonomous form of AI that is able to not just create but make independent decisions, Agentic AI is the next evolutionary leap in the technology. While Generative AI requires human input and so is reactive in nature making it comparable to an assistant, Agentic AI does not require constant prompting and initiates action based on numerous variables so is more proactive, more closely resembling a work colleague. Agentic AI will provide the perfect mould to create digital personas and looking even further into the future, experts predict we will see Agentic AI replaced by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which allow the AI to interpret, deduce and reason akin to the human mind.

Issues to iron out

Of course, these advances do also pose a number of dilemmas. Whereas the emphasis to date has been on prompt engineering, autonomous AI will require strict guardrails to be put in place to ensure real-time decision making is constrained. We’ve already seen the damage that faked personas can cause, such as the case of the finance worker for Arup working out of Hong Kong who was tricked into transferring $25m by a deep fake of the CFO on a video conference call. He assumed the group call was legitimate when he recognised his colleagues online when in fact everyone on the call was a deep fake. And then there’s also the thorny issue of culpability. If the digital twin makes a decision with unforeseen consequences, to what extent does responsibility for that lie with the provider of the AI technology, the company using it or you as the individual it is based upon?

Once these have been ironed out, the benefits of digital twins could, however, prove compelling. Humans will manage a team of clones, making them more efficient and productive and their role more varied. There will again be no real need to be in the office as comms will be handled almost exclusively by the twins, so expect to Return to Office (RTO) mandates revoked and say goodbye to those tedious weekly calls, global sales meetings and screen sharing presentations with colleagues.

Workers will also be freer, enabling them to work from any location – Yuan suggests they could be at the beach – and this will see nomadic working move from being a niche practice to the norm. In doing so, it could also potentially reverse the current trend of early retirement that is seeing 62% of retirees leave the workforce early i.e. before they reach a pensionable age bringing that expertise back into the business. And we can finally say goodbye to the 9-5 because there will be no fixed times for working, allowing humans to work more flexibly.

Remote workers and risk

Having a more mobile workforce will, however, require better safeguards to be put in place. Currently these workers represent a huge risk, with a recent Apricorn survey revealing that 60% of security decision makers expect their remote and hybrid employees to put data in danger. This is because 73% of those employees lack the skills and technology to keep data safe with almost half (47%) relying upon their own equipment when working away from the office which may then be poorly secured.

As with today’s digital nomads, this emancipated workforce will face different challenges to those simply working remotely from a regular location. They’ll be operating outside the perimeter so may sometimes have to rely on public WiFi. They’re likely to utilise a diverse range of devices, from mobile phones to laptops and external storage such as hard drives or USB sticks. And the risk to data is also higher if they’re working abroad out of a country where the local government takes a less regulated approach to data protection.

Overcoming these issues will require businesses to provide secure access such as via a VPN or network protected by zero trust technologies and the likelihood is we will need to see other controls brought in to verify the identity of twins and to prevent them from being hijacked, for instance.

When it comes to device use, the ideal is to require employees to use corporate sanctioned devices. This can ensure they are encrypted and that the business can oversee controls such as patch management and password management to prevent issues such as Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks. Where personal devices are allowed there should be clear acceptable use policies detailing the precautions that need to be taken. And finally, a robust backup policy will ensure that data is not lost or stolen and can be effectively recovered.

While these are all precautions that should be in place today, they’re going to become vital if this version of the future becomes a reality. Working remotely on an industrial scale will place businesses under tremendous strain unless they work to improve upon the foundations laid during the pandemic but those that do stand to reap real rewards, from productivity gains to recapturing a disenchanted workforce with these digital doppelgangers.

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