What if the AI you integrate into your organization isn’t just about efficiency or creating digital assistants, but completely changes how you work? Longtime digital trend watcher Don Tapscott says the next wave of artificial intelligence is all about identic AI – where personalized agents don’t just complete tasks, but understand your judgment and values and take actions on your behalf. He explains the technologies for this that already exist amid the rise of agents and bots, what it means for leaders and organizations, and the pitfalls to look out for. Tapscott is author of You to the Power of Two: Redefining Human Potential in the Age of Identic AI.
ADI IGNATIUS: I am Adi Ignatius.
ALISON BEARD: I’m Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
ADI IGNATIUS: All right, so we are back again this week to the topic of AI. One of the things that I find most interesting about AI is that despite its huge potential, there’s no blueprint for how to use it. So we’re all essentially pioneers experimenting with this powerful technology to figure out how it can help us.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I’m constantly hearing from colleagues, guests on this show, other contacts about how they’re using AI in really new and creative ways, and I think, “Gosh, I should really try that.” But at this point, I’m using it for writing article summaries that we need to do for the magazine, and HBR.org and honestly, feedback on which colleges my daughter should apply to. But I know that I could use it for so much more if I just put the work in to better understand it and train it.
ADI IGNATIUS: I think the breakthrough AI opportunity is still slightly ahead of us or slightly ahead of most of us, and that is the widespread introduction of AI companions that we’ll have at our disposal at work and home that are trained by us, that know everything we know, and that can take action on our behalf across a range of activities.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, so now that’s beginning to sound a little bit creepy. I don’t know that I’m willing to give an AI companion that much control over my life.
ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, look, that’s a fair point and I think a lot of people share that. I do think it’s coming and I think it’ll be hard to resist. Our guest today, Don Tapscott will talk about what he calls identic AI. Tapscott, who’s been spotting future trends in the tech space for decades is CEO of the Tapscott Group and author of the new book You to the Power of Two: Redefining Human Potential in the Age of Identic AI. Here’s my conversation with Don.
Now, I want to make sure we’re grounded in this conversation. Most of our listeners are probably comfortable using AI in their work and personal lives. They may or may not be experimenting with AI agents to handle certain tasks. Your book is projecting us forward though to a mostly not yet available technology that you’re calling Identic AI. Talk about what that is?
DON TAPSCOTT: Well, AI has really gone through three phases, modern generative AI. The first was Gen AI where AI could generate content with amazing capability, text, data, graphics, all kinds of stuff. We use it as a tool. Then AI went through a second phase where it acquired some agency where agents could act and they could manage tests. They could pursue goals without prompting it with questions or requests.
There are all kinds of agents. They’re agents in supply chains and call centers, financial systems and so on. But our view is that the agents that really matter are the personal agents, the rise of intelligent companions that really learn who we are, and they reflect our values and ultimately operate as extensions of ourselves. So the shift is that AI is no longer just an extraordinary technology. It’s becoming a part of the human experience, and we call these personal agents a subset of agentic AI, we call them identic AI.
ADI IGNATIUS: There’s certain concepts that are sort of just out there beyond the horizon, AGI, artificial general intelligence where machines truly have human cognitive capabilities is one. I guess the singularity is out there eventually. And now there’s identic AI. One question for our listeners who are trying to grapple with all this. Why do business leaders need to understand what you’re calling identic AI right now?
DON TAPSCOTT: Well, if identic AI is going to change everything about the human experience, it’s going to have huge implications for the enterprise and for management. A way of thinking about it is this is how we started the book with thanks to the Beatles. “You wake up, you get out of bed and you drag a comb across your head.” And before you’ve engaged with the day before you’ve gone downstairs to take a cup as Beatles say, your agent’s already figured out what’s going on. It’s summarized your health data, check your schedule, it’s flagged the traffic delay, it’s curated and summarized the news. Picked some articles that you actually care about. It reminded you of your sister’s birthday. It outlines several conferences that you will attend on your behalf, and by the time you reach the office your agent has, it’s not just an assistant updating your agenda and so on. It’s drafted replies to emails, it’s optimized production schedule, it’s tackled some customer complaints.
And as Peter Diamandis, the founder of XPRI, said to us in an interview, he’s got Peter bot, and it’s like having an infinite number of vice presidents. And so this thing is going to act as your consigliere, your doctor that’s been to every medical school in the world. Your tutor that’s literally a know-it-all, your planner, your counselor, but more than that, it’s going to learn your values, it’s going to anticipate your needs and really propelling your capabilities forward.
And this is not sci-fi. This is happening right now. And all the main technology companies have geared up to be delivering this technology right now. And I’ll be giving a speech in a week where this is going to be me on this one screen and digital Don on the other screen, and he’s going to help me answer questions. I’m pretty good at answering questions, but I don’t know what I wrote on page 232 of the Digital Economy in 1994. Maybe somebody wants to know about that.
It means for the manager that you have a superpower now, and this will change literally everything about the deep structure and architecture of the firm, about the way that people operate. There’s a huge shift from execution now to strategy because this technology does the execution, HR and everything that we know about that is about to change. So, buckle up.
ADI IGNATIUS: I want to get to some of these things later, but I want to go step-by-step here. As you said, this already exists, so I’m familiar, a lot of people have interacted with Reid Hoffman’s, Reid AI, which is, I don’t know if the term is a digital clone, I think that’s more just so that we can all experience it rather than necessarily a tool for the future. But there are people, as you mentioned, who are creating digital twins or identic AI whatever you call it, but I want to get a sense to what extent, I think when you listed all the things this can do, it probably sounded sci-fi to most people. What exists right now, to what extent is everything you described already available and in use?
DON TAPSCOTT: Everything I described is available and it’s in use. You can look to any one of the platforms and they’re rolling out their capability at different levels. Claude right now is one of the leaders – “Claude” Je m’excuse – and it’s got a capability to build your own agent. And the important thing here is that rather than using a bunch of tools, these are all coming together to have persistent memory and to get to know about you and to reflect your goals. And as you build them up, they become an extension of you.
For digital Don, for example, I’ve input about 500 documents, everything I could find that I’ve written my speeches, my PowerPoints, my books and articles and interviews and all kinds of stuff like that. And it’s learning about me and how I view things and how I think about things. And I don’t know if I’d describe it as a superpower yet, but wow, I’m a lot more capable than I was six months ago.
ADI IGNATIUS: Okay, so what does this look like in say, five years for a white-collar executive? What is the human doing? What is the identic doing in five years, your best guess?
DON TAPSCOTT: I think that we will spend a lot less time in execution related activities. You remember, I think you were editor of HBR when Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan famously argued that execution is strategy. And in an era of identic AI, that equation really breaks because AI agents can handle coordination analysis, scheduling, flow through all the other stuff about execution, they can do that at machine speed. Execution increasingly becomes commoditized. And so as a manager and executive, what differentiates a firm is no longer your ability to execute, but your ability to think big picture, to choose the right goals, to define purpose, to make high quality strategic judgments and so on. Now, this has been going on for some time, but it’s being supercharged now with the identic AI management shifts from supervising work to supervising direction.
ADI IGNATIUS: For this to have maximum value, it sounds like these identic AIs will have far more power to make decisions and complicated decisions that really multiply the number of Don’s who are out there or Adi’s interacting with people, making decisions. And that sounds great in terms of efficiency. It also, at least at this stage, seems scary. What if it makes a decision that actually is a misinterpretation of what I had wanted or what my company wants? Are we going to get to a point where we’re truly going to let AI make complicated decisions valued at millions of dollars that affect us, that affect our companies? And do we need to worry about checking or is it going to be fine?
DON TAPSCOTT: Well, no, it’s not going to be fine. It’s really delegation. It’s a good question. We’ve always delegated certain things to other people including making decisions. We have signing authorities and so on, but we have checks and balances and ways of ensuring that good decisions get made. And the same is true for an agent. Only you’re not delegating to someone who’s newer in the workforce or who’s a subordinate or something like that. You’re potentially delegating to an infinite number of vice presidents who have an IQ of 1000.
ADI IGNATIUS: What could go wrong?
DON TAPSCOTT: Well, I don’t know. I think if someone’s got an IQ of 1000 as opposed to 115, chances are they’re going to make some good decisions as long as you train them and equip them. And as long as there are checks and balances.
ADI IGNATIUS: Well. Let’s talk about training. What does training mean then? I think anybody listening to this is going to think, “Okay, I see the potential, I see the risk. I see the ethical considerations and risk.” So what does training mean? How do we make sure the parameters are such that this is doing what we want and will not do what we do not want?
DON TAPSCOTT: You’re not just training an individual, you’re training your agent. And it’s the same. You’re not just hiring an individual, you’re hiring someone with the capability. So what are you going to look at their resume, their experience? Well, maybe someone with a highly developed agent who’s new in the workforce can perform better than a seasoned executive. So the management of our agents, not just their training, but their review cycle, their accountability systems, their overall directions, their shaping, equipping with the values that you and your organiza