Don Tapscott’s new book (co-author Joseph Bradley) is You to the Power of Two: Redefining Human Potential in the Age of Identic AI.

Only a few years ago, the world was captivated by generative artificial intelligence – systems like ChatGPT that could write, summarize and create with startling fluency. That breakthrough was quickly followed by agentic AI, which extended those capabilities by giving AI initiative and the ability to act, manage tasks and pursue goals without constant prompting. AI agents are now permeating call centres, supply chains, financial systems, manufacturing and beyond.

Today we’re on the threshold of a far more profound development for each of us: the rise of personal agents – intelligent companions that learn who we are, reflect our values and begin to operate as extensions of ourselves.

Call this identic AI.

These personal agents are far more than digital helpers. They will function as a consigliere, private doctor, cultural curator, mentor, librarian, editor, financial planner and, at times, counsellor. They will learn our habits, anticipate our needs, extend our capabilities and increasingly act on our behalf. If designed responsibly, these digital counterparts could help Canadians navigate a more complex world and lead richer, more purposeful lives.

Picture a morning a couple of years from now. Before you’re fully awake, your AI has checked your health data, reviewed your schedule, flagged a traffic delay, surfaced a news item that you’ll care about and drafted e-mails for you. It suggests a playlist and reminds you about your sister’s birthday – with tailored gift ideas.

On your commute, it previews a conference it will attend for you, blocks a phishing attempt, preps you for a hard conversation and queues an article tied to your learning goals. It filters rather than floods. By the time you reach the office, it has adjusted your agenda, handled routine queries from colleagues, optimized a workflow to solve a problem and renegotiated a rate with your bank. Later, it checks your spending against long-term goals, recommends a diet tweak, flags a new mole on your skin and connects you with someone who shares your interests.

This sounds futuristic but the building blocks already exist. Within two to three years, these agents will be as common as smartphones, and far more powerful.

To understand identic AI, we need to trace the evolution of digital identity. Over the past 40 years, our digital selves have moved through three phases.

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The first was digital identification – the usernames, passwords and government credentials that prove who we are. These digital keys let us log in, cross a border or access our bank account.

The second was digital identity, comprised of the vast body of data we generate as we live and work online. Every purchase, location ping, digital photograph, streamed song, test result, text message and social post forms a growing archive of our lives. This virtual version of you may already know more about you than you do. It remembers your exact location on June 4 last year. It knows what time you went to bed, what you bought, what you liked online, what your doctor prescribed and which articles you read but never finished. It is a complete behavioural mirror.

Now we are entering the third phase: Our digital identity is getting an IQ, gaining reasoning, memory, creativity, initiative and maybe even agency. It won’t just store your life. It will help you run it. It won’t just record your choices. It will recommend, anticipate and eventually negotiate on your behalf. This is why we call it identic AI. It’s a smart, cognitive extension of our digital selves that amplifies our capabilities.

The implications for daily life are enormous. Education could transform as every learner gains a personalized tutor that understands their strengths, weaknesses and curiosity. Health care will shift from crisis response to continuous monitoring and prevention, identifying risks long before symptoms appear. Our communities could become more connected as agents match people based on values and interests, help navigate government services and support those experiencing loneliness.

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At work, employees will operate at a higher cognitive altitude, with an effective intelligence multiplied by their AI partner. Some may soon work with the equivalent of a high-IQ adviser whispering in their ear. Peter Diamandis, the founder of XPrize – who built an AI robot called Peter Bot, trained on his decades of writing and speaking – told me he now has an infinite number of “vice presidents.” His digital agent speaks for him, represents him and in some cases performs better than he does. What happens when every employee has this kind of capacity?

Companies will struggle with questions we’ve never faced before. If you’re hiring someone, do you evaluate their resume or the quality and sophistication of their digital self? A modestly credentialed young person with a brilliantly trained identic agent could outperform a seasoned executive. And what happens when an employee leaves the company? Their digital self will contain institutional memory: Strategies, informal networks and client history. Do they take that cognitive map with them? Does the company own any part of it? There is no management, legal or ethical framework for this. Yet the moment is coming fast.

With extraordinary promise comes extraordinary risk, and not just the usual worries about AI bias, bad advice, hallucinations or dependency on technology. For example, in the Internet age, each of us shifted memory from our brains to computers as tools such as Google and GPS remember for us. In the identic age we’re shifting thinking from our brains to computers. How do we do this to make us smarter, not dumber?

And who will own your digital self? Will it be you? Or will it be American technology giants who already control so much of our digital lives? Today, our data, attention and preferences are effectively owned by, or at least rented from, a handful of platforms. In the identic era, this arrangement is unsustainable. If your most powerful asset becomes your digital intelligence, losing control of it means losing control of your life, your human agency.

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This is why self-sovereign identic AI is essential. Your agent – your data, your history, your values, your cognitive extension – must be owned and controlled by you, not by corporations whose incentives may not align with your interests.

To own our digital selves, we’ll have to decentralize AI infrastructure from the ground up for transparency and community governance. Thanks to blockchain and other technologies, this is technically feasible.

The stakes are especially high for Canada. At the very moment when political tensions in the United States raise questions about our sovereignty, a new form of digital power is emerging. If identic AI becomes essential to productivity, learning, health and civic participation, the countries that deploy it wisely will prosper.

Canada cannot simply hope the market delivers these benefits equitably or that foreign platforms will protect our autonomy. To remain a prosperous and independent nation in the digital age, Canada needs a new economic model built around what amounts to universal basic AI, ensuring every Canadian has access to a trusted and self-sovereign personal AI companion that enhances intelligence, health, creativity and opportunity. Just as universal health-care and public education equipped us for the industrial age, universal access to personal intelligence will equip us for the next one.

The threat to Canada means that our identic agents cannot be the property of American technology giants. If our digital identities are controlled by centralized corporations, then our economy, our discourse and our democracy will be shaped by incentives we do not influence. The next era of national independence will not be won through pipelines or traditional industries, but through ownership of our intelligence of the human and digital kind.

Identic AI can enrich our lives and strengthen our society, but only if we assert control now. Canada has a brief window to act. If we move boldly, we can build a more prosperous, equitable and sovereign future. If we hesitate, our personal and national digital destiny will be written somewhere else.