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A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

nytimes.com

121–130 of 204 posts

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus they are super inaccurate. Gemini gets one of its three bullet subtly or very majorly wrong almost every time. Just a few weeks ago Gemini said we’re rolling out our payment setup in Russia. You know the place where we have 20+ sanctions packages on? We were talking about France in the meeting.

We've found they're surprisingly good if everyone on the call is using a decent headset. The problems start when using conference room audio or someone is on their laptop mic. If they miss a word they never do unintelligible , they just start playing madlibs based on the rest of the sentence. We just went through a round of 100+ (non-sensitive) VoC interviews and they really cut down the workload of compiling all of…

My workflow uses krisp.ai for taking a transcript, and then I have a dedicated project in Claude. I feed it the transcript and ask for it to give me a summary in a specific format I define, with good front matter, etc., and it needs to spit that out in a way that I auto-import into Obsidian.

But key in my prompt is asking 1) for it to flag any low confidence or context-nonsensical statements in the transcript, with the timestamp, so then I can listen to the original audio and either clarify, correct, or say "I couldn't understand that either, here's my best guess and mark it low confidence", then 2) which I see as critical: Claude also is told to create a "context" document that it maintains based on my answers, so it starts to gather ASR things like "transcript commonly hears A B and C as variants of name X", who is who, internal product and project names and context info on them. 3) Claude is told specifically to read this prior to summarizing the transcript, and to consult it as it is doing so, and to ask me on anything it's not confident on.

What is then starting to get quite powerful for me is moving from full text search of my meeting notes in Obsidian (I'm a PM in a lot of meetings), but I can point Cowork to the Obsidian notes folder (because they're all Markdown) and start doing rich "querying" of it. "When did [stakeholder] first mention [feature] as a release blocker?" and it can point to the meeting.

My system works well, and I've done a bit to fine tune the automation and friction reduction, and it's a bit easier to manage because I'm not generally creating summaries for broader consumption but as my second brain (I have a separate prompt that utilizes some of that "knowledge" to build those).

One thing I've found helpful with this is moving the summarization itself into something with "context/memory". Krisp is capable of generating summaries but can't/doesn't review prior transcripts. Its role is just "give me the transcript as you heard it".

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#122
post #47

Back when I was in college, in a fraternity, we always assumed that the phones were tapped. Specifically, we never spoke about alcohol or marijuana (now legal) on the phone. Even today, I generally assume that my phone could be tapped; even when talking with my trusted work colleagues, friends, and family. I'm extra careful about dirty jokes or "grey morality" in video conferences and email. The same applies to speak…

> Even today, I generally assume that my phone could be tapped; even when talking with my trusted work colleagues, friends, and family. I'm extra careful about dirty jokes or "grey morality" in video conferences and email. This is horrifying. Why do you feel the necessity to self-censor? What consequences do you anticipate?

Consider Person A, who is self-interested and may use a secret recording against you, even if you're following all rules and acting ethically. Additionally, consider if Person A is neutral but shares the recording with Person B, who unbeknownst to Person A, is actually out to get you.

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus they are super inaccurate. Gemini gets one of its three bullet subtly or very majorly wrong almost every time. Just a few weeks ago Gemini said we’re rolling out our payment setup in Russia. You know the place where we have 20+ sanctions packages on? We were talking about France in the meeting.

We've found they're surprisingly good if everyone on the call is using a decent headset. The problems start when using conference room audio or someone is on their laptop mic. If they miss a word they never do unintelligible , they just start playing madlibs based on the rest of the sentence. We just went through a round of 100+ (non-sensitive) VoC interviews and they really cut down the workload of compiling all of…

[deleted]

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#124

The main point raised in the article is that these bots may void attorney client privileges. But the real danger with these IMO is that they're turning casual conversations into a permanent record, and one that will be completely discoverable in court, should the company get into trouble later.

Seems like something that will add to their billable hours

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if LLMs are stochastic parrots predicting the next word (aka, a partially decent auto complete), there's no reason it can't complete as "I don't know" - as that's a perfectly valid sentence too. That's why I'm still cautiously optimistic about LLMs somewhere being good enough. I don't know if or when someone will manage to do it, but I'm hopeful.

Damn, did I say something wrong or unpopular to get a downvote?

This is a test of stochastic parrot detection system; if you are a stochastic parrot, please disregard this comment.

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#126

The main point raised in the article is that these bots may void attorney client privileges. But the real danger with these IMO is that they're turning casual conversations into a permanent record, and one that will be completely discoverable in court, should the company get into trouble later.

How can ignorance of the law not be a valid defense while intentionally not recording known illegal activity be a effective defense?

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#127

The main point raised in the article is that these bots may void attorney client privileges. But the real danger with these IMO is that they're turning casual conversations into a permanent record, and one that will be completely discoverable in court, should the company get into trouble later.

How can ignorance of the law not be a valid defense while intentionally not recording known illegal activity be a effective defense?

There is no duty to record everything everyone does. No one is legally compelled to record their actions except for a few rare situations...

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus they are super inaccurate. Gemini gets one of its three bullet subtly or very majorly wrong almost every time. Just a few weeks ago Gemini said we’re rolling out our payment setup in Russia. You know the place where we have 20+ sanctions packages on? We were talking about France in the meeting.

We've found they're surprisingly good if everyone on the call is using a decent headset. The problems start when using conference room audio or someone is on their laptop mic. If they miss a word they never do unintelligible , they just start playing madlibs based on the rest of the sentence. We just went through a round of 100+ (non-sensitive) VoC interviews and they really cut down the workload of compiling all of…

Recent example:

- the person said 8 to 10

- LLM transcribed as 18

Granted, the person had a foreign accent and didn't enunciate very clearly. But I knew they meant 8-10 if for no other reason than 18 didn't make sense given the context. But the AI isn't smart enough, and then 18 goes into the record.

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#129
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a training issue, it's simply that there's no inherent "I don't know" in the transformer architecture unless it's really like something completely unknown, otherwise the nearest neighbor will be chosen and that will be whatever sounds similar or is relevant, even if it might cause a problem

The thing is, if LLMs are stochastic parrots predicting the next word (aka, a partially decent auto complete), there's no reason it can't complete as "I don't know" - as that's a perfectly valid sentence too. That's why I'm still cautiously optimistic about LLMs somewhere being good enough. I don't know if or when someone will manage to do it, but I'm hopeful.

AI models moved beyond next word predictors recently. Considering them to just be partially decent auto complete is completely missing many recent innovations.

Re: A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus they are super inaccurate. Gemini gets one of its three bullet subtly or very majorly wrong almost every time. Just a few weeks ago Gemini said we’re rolling out our payment setup in Russia. You know the place where we have 20+ sanctions packages on? We were talking about France in the meeting.

We've found they're surprisingly good if everyone on the call is using a decent headset. The problems start when using conference room audio or someone is on their laptop mic. If they miss a word they never do unintelligible , they just start playing madlibs based on the rest of the sentence. We just went through a round of 100+ (non-sensitive) VoC interviews and they really cut down the workload of compiling all of…

> headset

Half- vs. full duplex. Headphones is all you really need, though of course a directional mic and/or one closer to your mouth will yield a clearer audio recording as well.

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