> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The End of “Always” - URL: https://thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com/the-end-of-always/ - Published: 2026-10-13T13:30:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-13T13:43:26.000Z - Description: In 2020, I stood at CES watching digital humans demonstrate human professions. Six years later, I’m asking what “they will always need me” really means. - Author: Precious “Preciosa” Myers-Brown - Tags: AI Through the Enabling Technology Lens I stood there in awe, staring at digital humans doing what I assumed would be professions of actual humans for a very long time. That was 2020\. It is now October 2026. On January 7, 2020, I recorded a digital person demonstration at CES in Las Vegas. I still have the video. It was so realistic. The booth was Project NEON, from Samsung’s STAR Labs, under a big neon.life sign. My clip catches four of the digital people on tall screens. A man in a black leather jacket talks with his hands. A man in a field vest, binoculars on his chest and a long-lens camera at his side, cups his hands to his mouth like he’s calling across a field. A man in a mustard sweater and glasses flips through a magazine. A flight attendant in a gray uniform and a red and blue scarf holds up a world route map and points to it. ![Four NEON digital figures on tall screens at CES 2020: a man in a leather jacket, a man with binoculars and a camera, a magazine reader, and a flight attendant holding a route map.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/76/14/76140e1a-227f-4fbb-a95a-8b6c75a8e0d6/content/images/2026/10/pmb-neon-ces-2020.png) *Four digital figures displayed at the NEON booth at CES in Las Vegas, January 7, 2020\. Montage of stills from footage by Precious “Preciosa” Myers-Brown. NEON demonstration by STAR Labs, backed by Samsung.* 0:00 /0:48 1× NEON at CES 2020, Las Vegas. Original footage by Precious “Preciosa” Myers-Brown, January 7, 2020. That day, I took the video while I was standing in that place. It was so crowded because so many people were in awe, impressed, and shocked that there was actual assignment happening for these digital humans. There were airline safety videos. There was a professor teaching a class. There was a personal trainer leading squats. There were digital humans reading books out loud, like the reading programs at the library where someone reads a story to the kids. There were digital humans modeling, like you would see in a magazine. There were even discussions about actors and movies and teaching videos. Think about the digital advertisement at the bus station while you’re standing there waiting for the bus, or the digital boards in certain stores. You assume that is a human model. What I understood at that time is that digital humans could be your digital models to do your advertisement. That makes the digital human almost free, as opposed to paying someone to do that job, and you can get the digital human to do it exactly like you want it done. The personal trainer stayed with me because of my own health and wellness journey. MIRROR had launched in 2018, before the 2020 CES visit, allowing a human trainer to deliver fitness instruction remotely. I remember connecting those dots while standing at NEON: in 2018, a human fitness instructor could train you remotely. Now it’s 2020, and a digital human is showing us how to do squats in the middle of CES. Imagine having that digital trainer on a big screen, running through workouts with you. Today, I’m looking at another part of that possibility. Systems such as Tempo use computer vision to track your movement and give you feedback on your form while you exercise. The system can observe how you perform a movement and prompt an adjustment. When I connect that capability with the digital human I saw in 2020, I start thinking about how much of the training experience could eventually come together in one system. They were utilizing the digital humans for roles, and they named it like professors at Ivy League universities. That is what they were talking about while I was standing there. Some would teach in classrooms where we have a shortage of teachers, or anywhere we want to digitize teaching. Another showed that the safety videos that play on airplanes would not need human actors. They would be digital actors, digital twins. In 2020, a USA Today reporter wrote that a NEON would not answer any user questions, then added one word: “yet.” A spokesperson told CNBC, “We are not looking to replace human jobs.” Just realize it was 2020\. It is now October 2026, and this starts to show you how we evolved. On January 4, 2024, Korean Air started playing a safety video on all of its flights with a virtual human named Rina as the flight attendant. The airline says she completed safety training at its Cabin Crew Training Center, and it named her an honorary flight attendant. In 2020, they talked about digital humans as professors at Ivy League universities. Since April 2026, Harvard Business School has been running HBS Foundry, an eight-week, $699 online bootcamp for founders, and its own professors are in it as AI avatars. Faculty volunteered to have digital versions of themselves made with HeyGen, an AI video company, and those avatars coach founders through practice pitches and mock board meetings between the live weekly sessions. So when people say, “Oh, I will always be a teacher,” or “They will always need me to do that job,” I want them to think about it. I’m not trying to use fear tactics. That’s not true based on what I’m seeing. Here is how I connect the dots. When we talk about AI agents and training AI, human input is teaching the AI to duplicate us so that it can be an “assistant.” Is that then the thing that can do some of the jobs that used to be done solely by humans? We trained technology on how to drive and navigate traffic, and now vehicles function autonomously. It extends the question I asked in [What Giant Are We Creating?](https://thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com/what-giant-are-we-creating/) I’m not saying this to say that technology can do it flawlessly. Flawlessly has errors in it too. A famous singer or a famous dancer can fumble their craft. A great basketball player can miss a few baskets. A famed fighter can lose a fight. That doesn’t make them not the greatest of all time. So when people say, “Oh, we tried AI. It doesn’t work, so now they need me to go back and do it manually as a human,” that is for a short window of time. We are already seeing glimpses that the technology can watch you, hand over hand, learn your reasoning processes and your functioning processes, and duplicate them. When you have to explain why you did it that way, you are training the machine to do what you do, faster and at scale. I see the same thing in my own work. When I build an enabling technology ecosystem, all of the different sensors, the radar, lidar, presence, and ambient sensors, are creating a digitized representation of how the person lives and wants to live. That allows for more predictive input and output in service planning. The ecosystem starts developing a digital awareness of the person, so we can provide more accurate systems and services while supporting the person to live more independently and live their best life. These systems can help develop care plans. In disability services, a QIDP, a Qualified Intellectual Disability Professional, or a QDDP, a Qualified Developmental Disability Professional, may coordinate and monitor a person’s plan of support. As a lifelong QIDP, I understand the time it takes to gather information, write, review data, correct data, and go back with more questions. Sometimes you are asking a staff member about a shift they worked three weeks ago and expecting them to remember a particular detail. All of that takes time away from getting out and being face-to-face with the person, understanding what is working, what is not working, and whether the support is helping them move toward their goals. The enabling technology ecosystems we build can do some of that work of collecting, gathering, and organizing information, with human oversight. When the relevant information is captured as events happen, we have more to work with than somebody’s memory weeks later. That can help fill gaps and give us a more timely, accurate picture to inform the care plan. We still need human intelligence to review the information, ask questions, and understand what it means in the context of that person’s life. I always say we need human intelligence plus artificial intelligence plus innovation to have leverage (HAIL™, my proprietary framework). The leverage here is more time with the person: time to listen, evaluate what is working, and make adjustments that support them in living their best life. I like to look at any situation, understand it, and see how it relates. It speaks to how these digital professors are showing up, how autonomous taxi cabs show up, how smart homes develop, how repair systems develop, and how health develops. Now, this is not me supporting anything that is happening in any political administration. But when you have advanced knowledge of how systems work, and how actions and systems can be digitized, you can start to infer. Is this the reason certain departments are being dismantled? Even the Department of Education, even the funding for certain degree programs and the classification of certain jobs? Not hindsight. What is the foresight? This is what I call reading the writing on the wall. If we stay hinged to the idea that “I will always have,” then you will be SOL. We need to unhinge from these constructs and start to figure out the new way we need to learn to exist in this digital world. Start with what you control. Build your digital case: get what you know out of your head and out from behind your employer’s name, somewhere a person or an agent can find it, understand it, and act on it. Start before something happens. ## Sources - [CNN Business report on MIRROR’s one-on-one personal training](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/10/08/tech/mirror-fitness-startup-personal-training?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), October 8, 2019 (MIRROR’s September 2018 launch, live and on-demand classes, and a human trainer working with you remotely through the device) - [Dispatch from CES: Giant TVs, Obsequious Gadgets, and Artificial People](https://streetfightmag.com/2020/01/10/dispatch-from-ces-giant-tvs-obsequious-gadgets-and-artificial-people/?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), Damian Rollison, Street Fight, January 10, 2020 (the NEON personal trainer leading squats) - [CES: Buzzy NEON startup builds ‘artificial humans’](https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-ces-buzzy-neon-startup-artificial.html?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), USA Today via TechXplore, January 10, 2020 - [CES 2020 Kicks Off, Samsung Announces “Artificial Human”](https://www.unite.ai/ces-2020-kicks-off-samsung-announces-artificial-human/?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), Unite.AI, January 2020 (the STAR Labs statement to CNBC) - [Virtual humans debut on Korean Air’s in-flight video](https://www.kedglobal.com/airlines/newsView/ked202401040006?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), KED Global, January 4, 2024 - [Korean Air releases a new safety video featuring virtual humans](https://www.airlineratings.com/articles/korean-air?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), AirlineRatings, January 4, 2024 (Rina’s safety training and honorary title) - [MBA Roundup: Harvard Business School Uses AI Faculty Avatars To Teach Entrepreneurship Bootcamp](https://poetsandquants.com/2026/08/24/mba-roundup-harvard-business-school-uses-ai-faculty-avatars-to-teach-entrepreneurship-bootcamp/?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), Poets&Quants, August 24, 2026 (April rollout) - [Harvard is selling a US$699 course taught by AI clones of its faculty](https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/08/29/harvard-is-selling-a-us699-course-taught-by-ai-clones-of-its-faculty?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), The New York Times via The Star, August 29, 2026 - [3D Tempo Vision & Form Feedback](https://support.tempo.fit/support/solutions/articles/151000154714-3d-tempo-vision-form-feedback?ref=thevoiceofenablingtechnology.pmbofficial.com), Tempo (movement mapping, form-feedback cues, range of motion, and a notice when your form is corrected) **Framework attribution:** HAIL™ is a proprietary framework created by Precious “Preciosa” Myers-Brown (PMB).