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Executive educator and coach Marshall Goldsmith recently spoke at the DES (Data Engineering Summit) hosted by AIM, hinting towards creating an AI-powered virtual avatar of himself.
This would be done with the help of Fractal Analytics, as a one-of-a-kind endeavour to share his skills and preserve his legacy for years. Marshallgoldsmith.ai, an AI-powered virtual business coach, is based on OpenAI’s GPT-3.5.
Speaking about the project, Goldsmith said, “This is a legacy project for me – I’m 74 years old, so this is a way of being present, even when physically I’m no longer around.”
But why a chatbot? “It can answer questions far better than me,” the bestselling author said.
Known as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, Goldsmith has a huge fan following, comprising of experts and C-suite executives. Since people are eager to learn from him, Goldsmith has collaborated with Fractal to develop Marshallgoldsmith.ai to better his reach for these people.
“I have been mentoring leaders for 47 years. I’ve been a coach to people like the president of the World Bank, the head of Mayo Clinic and five ‘CEOs of the year’ in the United States,” Goldsmith said.
Inside Marshallgoldsmith.ai and Fractal
Speaking to Fractal’s cofounder, group chief executive and vice-chairman Srikanth Velamakanni at DES, Goldsmith shared, “Years ago, I joined a program called ‘Design the Life You Love’, which inspired me to emulate my heroes—kind, generous, great teachers. Motivated by them, I vowed to share my knowledge widely.”
This led to the creation of Marshallgoldsmith.ai.
“Users will benefit from everything I’ve written. I have lots of content – I’ve authored or edited 52 books. In addition, I’ll be sharing insights from some of my friends, who include at least 25 of the top 50 business thinkers in the world,” he said.
Marshallgoldsmith.ai is the most recent version that makes use of generative AI technology. Natural conversations are made possible by LLMs’ contextual understanding, which also shows generalisation skills and lessens the need for rules. The speech component of Marshallgoldsmith.ai uses GenAI to accurately mimic Marshall’s voice.
Initially, when the idea of building something like this was being considered, the required technology wasn’t ready yet. However, over the years, the tech landscape evolved tremendously, making the Marshallgoldsmith.ai vision possible.
Marshallgoldsmith.ai has customised the LLM to incorporate Marshall’s leadership and coaching philosophy from his articles, books, videos, and other materials.
Further, to ensure accuracy and safety, Marshallgoldsmith.ai is designed to provide precise information about Marshall’s background. It only answers questions within Marshall’s area of expertise.
On a positive note, Fractal is experimenting with some of the most cutting-edge technology to build Marshallgoldsmith.ai, and it has been an excellent experience for the team to use AI technology in a positive way.
Recently, Goldsmith said in an interview that Fractal funded and developed Marshallgoldsmith.ai which they considered as a Guru. When asked as to why he chose Fractal, Marshall replied, “One, they are doing this for free out of goodwill. Two, this is what Fractal does as an AI company, and three, they actually chose me for this wonderful partnership.”
AI Life Coach Aspiration
Looking to the future, Marshallgoldsmith. ai is paving the way for further development. Currently, the bot has around one million words of content from Goldsmith. Moreover, top thinkers like Martin Lindstrom, Alan Mulally, and others are contributing their knowledge to expand Marshallgoldsmith.ai’s capabilities.
Along similar lines, last year, Google DeepMind announced testing of a personal coach, but there isn’t much information on its current status. However, the Fractal coach is based on Goldsmith, benefitting the users to get life advice from an expert of his standing.
Marshallgoldsmith.ai will be continually updated and expanded. In the future, in addition to chat and audio capabilities, it will also have video capabilities, allowing users to see a computer-generated version of Goldsmith speaking multiple languages.
