The undead workforce: AI avatars could keep you on the job after you're gone

Get ready for your employers to demand the right to create your AI avatar, putting you to work after you’ve quit, retired, been fired or died. In sports, so-called “image and likeness” contracts are routine — teams pay players to use their names, images and likenesses in advertising, games and other places, noted Daryl Plummer, Gartner distinguished VP analyst, chief of research and fellow, speaking at the recent Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo conference.

This practice will become more widespread with AI as companies look to tap deeper into employees’ knowledge, Plummer said. “It’s about knowledge retention,” he said. “If a company can use AI to capture your knowledge — to suck it up and put it in a container they can use — why shouldn’t they?” he said.

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AI is affecting everything, Plummer said, citing examples from the law, baseball, sewage treatment, baseball, dating and therapy. “It’s like a giant whirlwind spinning everything around and we are going to be carried along with this. We have to figure out how we’re going to land.” Today’s workers need to plan for the eventuality that their employers might clone them with AI, Plummer said. “Every one of us may be subject to the idea that our company wants to turn us into an AI avatar,” he said. “What happens when they do that? What if they make the avatar say something that you wouldn’t be caught dead saying?”

The AI avatar might work on projects while you’re working elsewhere or after you’ve left the company. “Do you get paid twice?” Plummer said. “I’m assuming no is the answer — but you might negotiate better than I do,” he said.

https://www.fierce-network.com/broadband/undead-workforce-ai-avatars-could-keep-you-job-after-youre-gone