My Twin Went to Paris

Je pense, donc je suis… copied?

I went to UNLEASH Paris and came home with three things. A suitcase that no longer zips. A mild dependency on pain au chocolat. And the unshakeable feeling that half the people I met were about to be cloned.

Not in a sci-fi way. In a very polite, nicely lit, “would you like a lanyard?” way.

Everywhere I turned, someone was talking about digital twins. Twins of your knowledge. Twins of your judgement. Twins that sit in meetings so you don’t have to. Richard took the stage on the human digital twin, I moderated two sessions, and by Wednesday afternoon I was seriously considering ordering a twin of myself just to work the coffee queue.

She’d be marvellous. Up at 5am. Never misses a follow-up. Never says “per my last email” out loud, only thinks it, which is the professional standard. My team asked if she could also do the expenses. I said no. Even digital me has limits.

Here’s the question nobody on the expo floor could answer cleanly: when the twin is built, who owns it?

Think about what goes into one. Your emails. Your meeting notes. The way you handle a difficult client. The instinct you spent fifteen years earning. A twin isn’t a tool you’ve been issued. It’s a copy of the most valuable thing you bring to work.

So what happens when you leave? Does your twin stay behind and keep working? Does it get your desk? Does it get a leaving card? Does it get your next pay rise?

Some voices in the industry are already sketching a future where employers hold twins of their people’s expertise. I disagree, strongly. If an organisation can keep a working copy of you after you’ve walked out of the door, it hasn’t hired you. It has harvested you.

My position is simple. People should create and own their own twins. They license them to an employer while they work there, and take them with them when they go, the way you’d take a pension. If a twin creates value, the human behind it gets paid for that value. Otherwise we’re building a whole new layer of Ghost GDP (Gross Domestic Product): value the economy produces but cannot see, cannot tax, and cannot pay anyone for.

I love a good panel. I moderated two. But a panel is not a policy, and applause is not legislation.

Our employment law was written for humans who clock in. The Employment Rights Act, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE), IR35: none of them imagined a worker who can be copied, paused, transferred or run in three meetings at once. Try explaining to a tribunal that your twin was TUPE’d to the new contractor but you weren’t. I’ll bring popcorn.

These are the questions politicians need to be asking now, not after the first test case lands:

• Is a digital twin property, personal data, or labour?
• Who is taxed when a twin does the work?
• Can an employer keep, use or sell a twin after the person has left?
• Can someone be made redundant by their own twin?
• Who is accountable when a twin gets it wrong?

The technology will not wait for a second reading. If Westminster leaves it too long, the twins will have formed a union before the Bill gets out of committee.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth. If nobody decides who owns a digital self, someone still does. It just gets decided by whoever writes the terms and conditions. Default is a decision. That’s why ethics has to win this one, and win it early, for the people whose minds are being copied.

This is exactly why Bloor’s Market Guide on Digital Twins, out later this month, matters.

We’ve spent the autumn in analyst sessions with the vendors building this market, asking the questions the brochures skip. Not just “what can your twin do?” but “who owns it, can it leave with the person, can you prove where its knowledge came from, and who stays in charge?”

The guide maps the market against four layers, Representation, Memory, Cognition and Agency, and tests every vendor on ownership, portability, provenance and human sovereignty. Bloor is first to market with this, and that’s deliberate. Somebody independent has to set the bar before the market sets it for us.

If you’re a Human Resources (HR) leader wondering what you’re about to buy, a vendor who wants to show you’re building twins the right way, or a policymaker who’d like to get ahead of this rather than behind it, get in touch. We’d love to talk. My twin has asked me to say she’s very much looking forward to the launch. I’ve told her she’s not getting the byline.

Cheney Hamilton
Research Director – FusionWork™ Bloor Research

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