Colleague Skill AI Project Extracts Digital Abilities from Workers and Historical Figures

A viral project called Colleague Skill claims to extract skills from office workers and historical figures like Steve Jobs and Gautama Buddha, making them available as downloadable digital files. Developed by 24-year-old engineer Zhou Tianyi from Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the tool was created in under four hours as a whim. Zhou explained to The Paper, a media outlet affiliated with Shanghai United Media Group, that the initial goal was to transform work communications, documents, and experience into reusable skills to reduce repetitive tasks. The program was designed for situations when colleagues leave behind unmaintained documentation, aiming to "turn cold goodbyes into warm skills" and achieve "cyber-immortality." Available in multiple languages including Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, and Portuguese, the project was hosted on Microsoft-backed GitHub, the world's largest source-code hosting platform. The tool's emergence has tapped into widespread AI job anxiety in China, sparking viral attention online.