A 24-year-old engineer at Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has launched Colleague Skill, an AI tool claiming to extract downloadable skills from colleagues and figures like Steve Jobs and Gautama Buddha. Developed in under four hours, the project went viral on Microsoft-backed GitHub amid fears of AI displacing jobs in China. Zhou Tianyi told The Paper the tool turns work communications and documents into reusable skills to prevent repetitive labor.
Zhou Tianyi, a 24-year-old engineer from the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, told The Paper, a media outlet affiliated with state-backed Shanghai United Media Group, that Colleague Skill was a whim developed in under four hours.
The tool targets scenarios where "your colleague quit, leaving behind a mountain of unmaintained docs," as Zhou wrote in the project's description on Microsoft-backed GitHub, the world's largest source-code hosting site. It aims to "turn cold goodbyes into warm skills … and cyber-immortality." The program is available in multiple languages, including Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, and Portuguese.
The project claims to have distilled skills—such as Steve Jobs' product intuition and those of Gautama Buddha and ordinary office workers—into digital forms uploaded online for free download. This has sparked viral spread in China, fueled by fears over AI job displacement.
Zhou said the initial aim was to convert work communications, documents, and experience into reusable skills, saving human workers from repetitive tasks.
