No, that would be a strict improvement. The AI note-takers can easily "mishear" or "misreport" non-existent illegal and unethical things. It also seems to easily mess up numbers (which is big problem, because a lot of decisions hinge on precise numbers -- imagine inflating an inventory by an order of magnitude, and then imagine having to pay a tariff on something that never existed).
I have a friend who works at a large-ish company that imports and manufactures things (in one of the clerical/quantitative professions). A few years back, they had the IT department go on a kind of "inquisition", wherein they forced employees to disable the summarization function that came with MS Teams, and threatened to fire them if they did not. The resistance to this demand was surprising -- most people are clueless about the cost of their own convenience. Worst of all, people would zone out of meetings, because the AI was producing summaries, which they would then never read.
The effect of the technology was that it made meetings infinitely more expensive, because the supposed benefit of meetings was nullified by complacency, _and_ it made the meetings a liability (incorrectly summarized meetings, that could be used in the discovery process, sure, but could also be sold by MSFT as a kind of market-research-data to competitors in the space).
Nothing illegal has to happen in these meetings at all, for this tech to cause an infinity of problems for the corporation. Every employee that uses these is effectively an unwitting spy. And if that is the case, then the meetings might as well be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (or whatever people watch these days)[1].
[1]: Maybe this is the future. Which I am okay with, but only if the entire planet has to do it, and the penalties for not doing it are irrecoverably severe.
With the level of surveillance and erosion of privacy, that is essentially what is happening. We all know that we are being watched and surveilled. There is no longer an "argument". Anything you say in public or private could potentially be used against you in the future.
I wish that we would all insist that it starts at the highest level down, rather than the other way round. Maybe also if you look at information on me, I get notified and get to look at the information on you. Unfortunately surveillance is a one way street.
No there's the potential of that happening. That isn't what actually happens. If everyone's phone was continuously recording and storing everything 24/7 we'd need much bigger batteries for one thing.
Actually, many people fight this kind of "progress". Just look at what is happening to Flock right now. True "technological progress" would be using technology to empower humans, not to exploit and subjugate them.
Smaller, more capable, cheaper? Yes, it absolutely is progress.
The only question is whether everyone gets a slice, or it ends up locked down so only governments and corporations have access to it. Obivously I come down on the sousveillence side of the fence - it's the lesser of two evils. If it exists I want everyone to have it, and you can't stop it existing.
Going to also be harder to hide completely legal, but not ideal stuff. Like randomly complaining about your boss to a colleague or casually discussing a feature you're stuck working on that you think is a bad idea.
>casually discussing a feature you're stuck working on that you think is a bad idea.
I’ll be honest, this is something that I hope AI note taking tools capture and incorporate into summaries of the company’s status. Especially if they act as an intermediary without revealing the specific person who said it. There’s a lot of information latent within organizations that doesn’t get properly shared due to concerns of retaliation or simply embarrassment that would benefit everyone by being communicated sooner.
The people supplying this technology explicitly want it to tell them what their serf are doing. There will be no "honest but anonymous informing of upper management".
That information is often intentionally not cascaded up the chain because the higher up you go, the more rigid the thinking gets - at least in my experience. Upstream doesn't want to hear the bad news or hear about how their idea is dumb. They want us to just do the bad idea and if the bad idea doesn't work out, they want to hang the ICs out to dry.
Maybe some smaller shops are not like this, but the bigger your company is, the more you'll find this type of thinking to persist.
In theory, I do like your idea - anonymously cascading feedback upstream. I just see no avenue for this to succeed in practice.
Or even completely legal things that a majority of people agree with, ex:
"It seems that starting in 2025 one of your employees began spreading many bigly unfair and hateful lies about Dear Leader in team meetings. We at the Department of Truth would hate to see your operating license revoked for encouraging such unpatriotic behavior..."
I have a friend who works at a large-ish company that imports and manufactures things (in one of the clerical/quantitative professions). A few years back, they had the IT department go on a kind of "inquisition", wherein they forced employees to disable the summarization function that came with MS Teams, and threatened to fire them if they did not. The resistance to this demand was surprising -- most people are clueless about the cost of their own convenience. Worst of all, people would zone out of meetings, because the AI was producing summaries, which they would then never read.
The effect of the technology was that it made meetings infinitely more expensive, because the supposed benefit of meetings was nullified by complacency, _and_ it made the meetings a liability (incorrectly summarized meetings, that could be used in the discovery process, sure, but could also be sold by MSFT as a kind of market-research-data to competitors in the space).
Nothing illegal has to happen in these meetings at all, for this tech to cause an infinity of problems for the corporation. Every employee that uses these is effectively an unwitting spy. And if that is the case, then the meetings might as well be recorded and uploaded to YouTube (or whatever people watch these days)[1].
[1]: Maybe this is the future. Which I am okay with, but only if the entire planet has to do it, and the penalties for not doing it are irrecoverably severe.