In a recent conversation with Sunder P, CEO of GetFriday, Nishant Kapoor (Productivity Coach and Consultant) in UK discussed how AI is reshaping the landscape of human virtual assistant tasks. Nishant highlighted that AI tools are highly efficient for automating research, summarizing information, and repurposing content—tasks that traditionally required significant human effort. Instead of manually searching for information, AI can now fetch, compile, and present insights almost instantly.
However, Nishant also emphasized that while AI is a game-changer for repetitive and structured tasks, it still falls short when it comes to handling complex, multi-step processes that require critical thinking, decision-making, and adaptability. Tasks involving extensive back-and-forth communication, nuanced problem-solving, and strategic execution continue to rely heavily on human assistants. Rather than replacing human VAs, AI is becoming a complementary tool, allowing assistants to focus on higher-value activities that demand judgment, emotional intelligence, and personalization.
GetFriday is training its assistant to use AI tools effectively to optimize work outcomes for its clients. So you get the power of AI with the guard rails of human due diligence.
Video Transcript (Nishant Kapoor)
Nishant: I definitely think I would say that a lot of my. research right, I can ask AI, you know, for example, anything I need to find out instead of doing a Google search. I mean, I would use message for doing the Google search, summarizing the results and giving me a document. That is something that; like a perplexity can do instantly. I just started using for that for repurposing.
I don’t use AI for writing content. I think it doesn’t do a good job. I’ve tried it, but for repurposing content I think AI is a great tool. This is something that I think I human you know it’s inevitable that human assistance will be replaced with AI assistance for some of these tasks, but I think. More complex tasks…
There are more complex tasks. I think there is a gap between what a person should; a productive, effective person should be focused on doing themselves and what they should be delegating to an assistant. And then when you delegate to that assistant and then there’s they could be delegating to an AI assistant. I still think there’s a huge opportunity of tasks for (human) assistants to do. Especially sequential tasks, multi –step tasks that there’s a lot of back and forth involved. I definitely think human assistance will still continue to be very valuable.
GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris.
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