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AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

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Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#291

Post by sneak »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #198
sneak wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in meetings don’t type very fast, and find it easier to talk than to write. This means that prior to AI transcription/summary bots, there wasn’t much written documentation about the decisions and conclusions from meetings. Now hopefully that will change.

I've also read a thing (dunno if it was opinion or fact) that posited that people's reading ability is directly correlated to a preference for video, I suspect it's the same with meetings. I read / write all day (including on here lmao), meetings are draining in comparison. But the people in those meetings don't read / write nearly as much as I do. I did once think that if the meeting were to be transcribed, people a…

I administer reading comprehension tests and typing speed tests to all candidates I consider hiring.

It’s overlooked.

Good ones who can’t type fast, I assign them typing lessons their first few paid days on the job, and a half hour twice a week thereafter for a while.

I’m an outlier and can type 120wpm without trying very hard, but I expect 40-50wpm (touch typing, not hunt and peck) at a minimum from staff that work with computers and aren’t disabled.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#293

Post by troyvit »

We have a lot of sensitive meetings these days, so we aren't recording them. We have had to put guard rails in place to keep people from sending their AI note-takers to the meetings because they don't listen to our CEO when he says not to do that. Few people in our org worry about the security implications of ingesting sensitive information with these tools.

I read this from a video transcript on National Law Review [1]:

> The question becomes, where is it saved? Who has access to it? Is it secure? Is it being disclosed? All the same kinds of questions that organizations face when they are processing sensitive personal data or sensitive company data. That's just to kick it off.

But the wapo article says it even better:

> 'Nothing will be forgotten'

That is not always a feature with meetings, and the more you read the article the more vapid most of the responses here ("meetings dumb. me no have to go now") become.

[1] https://natlawreview.com/article/we-get-privacy-work-assessi...

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#294

Post by _Algernon_ »

squigz wrote: post #289
mlsu wrote: post #286

Lots of talk here about writing being far superior to talking. This is entirely true. The thing you guys have to realize is that most people, like truly 80% of the population and probably some large subset of sw eng, hate reading and writing. People see reading as a chore. The last full book they read was in an elective in college and even then they skimmed the spark notes. They see writing as a stupid thing they hav…

> Lots of talk here about writing being far superior to talking. This is entirely true. This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone. > A paragraph of the written word is scary to a percentage of the population, certainly most “normal people,” and definitely…

>This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone.

It is though. The amount of thought that can be put into writing is at least 1-2 orders of magnitude greater. The amount of thought that can be put into conversational speech is limited to roughly one second per second.

Writing also has the benefit of maintaining a record of what was said. The number of misunderstandings that could have been a avoided by writing is staggering.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#295

Post by bumby »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #282
CuriouslyC wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, meetings are low information density because people are too lazy to plan an agenda and assign homework to a meeting beforehand, so that the meeting can focus on solutioning and actually delivering value. I noped out of management track to focus on being a top level IC because I could informally do the actually valuable "management" stuff in that role anyhow (documentation, planning, mentoring, client consultation…

Homework before hand is an anti pattern IMO. It assumes people aren’t busy in the rest of their day and the meeting scheduler is inflating the toll of the meeting with a hidden prep tax. This is how people end up with 12 hour days. Bezos forbade pre-meeting homework at Amazon for this reason. He was having a hard time keeping up with everything and the meetings were basically people recriminating each other for not b…

I might disagree on this. For a meeting that covers any moderately complex situation to be productive, the attendees need to understand the context. That sounds like what Bezos was after. Doing “homework” beforehand ensures that people aren’t sitting idly while one person is reading the report for the first time or otherwise trying to bring themselves up to speed on the context everyone else already knows. I don’t think that’s the best use of everyone’s time, unless you expect meetings to be the primary objective of those attendees. It sounds to me that leadership should be delegating decisions to people who understand the context rather than spending time at every meeting going over background. Of course, that only works well in high-trust environments.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#296

Post by squigz »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #294
squigz wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of talk here about writing being far superior to talking. This is entirely true. This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone. > A paragraph of the written word is scary to a percentage of the population, certainly most “normal people,” and definitely…

>This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone. It is though. The amount of thought that can be put into writing is at least 1-2 orders of magnitude greater. The amount of thought that can be put into conversational speech is limited to roughly one second per…

The amount of thought that can be put into writing as a function of total time thinking/communicating is probably nearly the same or less than talking. That is, if you spend a second figuring out what you're going to say, you can put more thought into your words.

> Writing also has the benefit of maintaining a record of what was said. The number of misunderstandings that could have been a avoided by writing is staggering.

Not everything needs to be recorded - and when it does, one can record the conversation, or take notes.

Not to mention, misunderstandings crop up in text all the time, often due to lack of tone being conveyed

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#297

Post by phil21 »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #282
CuriouslyC wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, meetings are low information density because people are too lazy to plan an agenda and assign homework to a meeting beforehand, so that the meeting can focus on solutioning and actually delivering value. I noped out of management track to focus on being a top level IC because I could informally do the actually valuable "management" stuff in that role anyhow (documentation, planning, mentoring, client consultation…

Homework before hand is an anti pattern IMO. It assumes people aren’t busy in the rest of their day and the meeting scheduler is inflating the toll of the meeting with a hidden prep tax. This is how people end up with 12 hour days. Bezos forbade pre-meeting homework at Amazon for this reason. He was having a hard time keeping up with everything and the meetings were basically people recriminating each other for not b…

All bezos did was explicitly make the homework a required part of calling a meeting. Correctly putting the majority of the prep work on the person calling the meeting to begin with.

Then they simply moved the implied 20-30 minute prep time everyone should be doing anyways into the meeting block itself.

If a meeting isn’t important enough to prep materials or an agenda for the meeting should be canceled.

My theory is all standing scheduled regular meetings are basically useless. If I run a startup again they will be outright banned for my org. Meetings about a specific topic or issue are different.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#298

Post by nancyminusone »

meroes wrote: post #65

The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most mee…

In meetings I attend in my line of work, more often than not it's about something AI wouldn't be able to summarize anyway.

"Do you want these to fit together like this or like this?"

AI would only be able to summarize to the context of this comment.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#299

Post by bumby »

PeterStuer wrote: post #160
meroes wrote: post #65

The problem is these meetings are so low information density even an AI summary is not worth my time. And it’s not some elitist mindset. It’s like the entire reason there are these regular meetings is to make some mid level person feel better. They like giving directions vocally because that authority is harder to question than if they wrote up a memo and all the receivers can poke holes in it. I’m convinced most mee…

They are "low information density" because that is not the point of the meeting. Meetings are first and foremost about relationship management. You do not get to management and certainly not climb the management hierarchy if you do not at least implicitly feel this. The actual meeting topic, while it can be relevant, is secondary. You establish and reinforce the pecking order, sense allegiance and subversion, or, fee…

>Meetings are first and foremost about relationship management.

You might be hitting on a specific personality type, rather than a goal of meetings.

In his book “Never Split the Difference”, Chris Voss relates three kinds of people differentiated by how they relate to time. One group thinks of time as a way to manage relationships. That’s the manager you allude to. But another type is the classic Type A personality who views “time as money.” If the meeting isn’t getting to brass tacks and outlining strategy and tasks, they will be frustrated. The last group thinks of time as a way to wrap their minds around a problem to reduce uncertainty. The authors point is that you need to understand how people view the time spent discussing a problem to really know how to manage the interaction.

If you read many of the responses to your post in this context, it becomes clear which group each commenter belongs to in many cases.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#300

Post by troyvit »

mlsu wrote: post #286

Lots of talk here about writing being far superior to talking. This is entirely true. The thing you guys have to realize is that most people, like truly 80% of the population and probably some large subset of sw eng, hate reading and writing. People see reading as a chore. The last full book they read was in an elective in college and even then they skimmed the spark notes. They see writing as a stupid thing they hav…

Heh, I agree that writing is superior to talking, but not in the way you do. I much prefer to take meeting notes than to listen to a bot munge names and concepts. Any mistakes in note-taking are mine, and I can own that.

If it's multiple people tag-teaming in the same doc for meetings it's even better. It's a whole new level of collab during the meeting that helps tighten the relationships and keep track of what's going on. It also captures the tone better.

I get that AIs work best offloading the tedious parts of life, but I guess for me note taking isn't tedious.

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