SINGAPORE: So it seems that ChatGPT might soon sit next to you in your upcoming team meeting (virtually, of course), as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang paints a vivid picture of the future workplace—and it’s anything but ordinary.
Speaking in an interview with Citadel Securities, Huang declared that tomorrow’s office landscape will be a hybrid one: “a combination of humans and digital humans,” Fortune reports.
Yet, though your future co-worker might not breathe oxygen, they’ll still need HR orientation, a staff pass, and maybe even an office mug.
AI nurses, marketers, accountants, and lawyers could be worth trillions!
Huang, the billionaire co-founder of Nvidia and a leading voice in AI innovation, estimated the agentic AI labour market—essentially digital workers like AI nurses, marketers, accountants, and lawyers—could be worth trillions.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you license some and you hire some, depending on the quality and deep expertise,” Huang said. His point was that these digital humans won’t just be bots responding to emails. They’ll be integrated into organisations, carrying out work alongside us flesh-and-blood types.
Think OpenAI, Cursor, Replit, and even Nvidia’s own in-house agents, which Huang revealed are already outnumbering humans in the company’s cybersecurity team.
IT departments will double as “HR for digital employees…”
One of Huang’s most eyebrow-raising predictions was that company IT departments will soon double as “HR for digital employees.”
“I tell my CIO…they’re going to be the HR department of agentic AI in the future,” he shared. “Those digital employees are going to work with our biological ones, and that’s going to be the shape of our company in the future.”
That future may not be far off. Nvidia already ensures that even its digital staff get proper onboarding to absorb the company culture and values. AI agents need to know the coffee orders, Slack etiquette, and perhaps even when not to kiasu.
AI may outperform “almost all humans at almost all things…”
This isn’t some Huang’s sci-fi daydream. Other top tech minds share similar views.
At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff predicted current CEOs may be the last to manage all-human teams. “From this point forward… we will be managing not only human workers but also digital workers,” he said.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took it a notch higher, warning that by 2026 or 2027, AI may outperform “almost all humans at almost all things.”
No wonder Singaporean grads may be sweating. With AI creeping into every role, from white-collar cubicles to marketing brainstorms, entry-level jobs are already feeling the squeeze, with evidence showing hiring is slowing for fresh grads.
AI agents will force redefine performance metrics and upskill or replace human staff
According to KPMG’s AI Quarterly Pulse Survey, the number of companies deploying AI agents has tripled since Q4 of last year. A whopping 82% of business leaders believe these agents will become vital contributors within a year, and the same number say they’ll reshape the entire business landscape within two.
Even more alarmingly, 87% believe these AI agents will force companies to redefine performance metrics and upskill or replace human staff.
KPMG’s Todd Lohr summed it up as: “This isn’t just about technology adoption. It’s about fundamental business transformation that requires reimagining how work gets done—and how it is measured.”
Singapore, are we also ready?
With Singapore’s Smart Nation drive in full swing, the Republic may be among the first to embrace this AI-human hybrid workforce.
But as HR departments begin preparing for the integration of AI agents into their workforce, important questions arise about how these digital entities will be managed—ranging from performance evaluation and accountability to security protocols and long-term maintenance frameworks.
