I am not a fan of most meetings. This is especially the case in academia, where meetings around about proposing something exciting and then learning how to make it unexciting by following the rules. Such meetings are painful, time-consuming and unsatisfying. They take away from what I regard as ‘real work.’ It doesn’t matter if the meeting is in-person or online. Having some good food can take the edge off. But if Mark Zuckerberg has his way, we will all be in some virtual environment without an excuse to have doughnuts.
Research has shown that, despite my misgivings, meetings can be productive. In the book, The Org, by Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan, we are told that meetings are the lifeblood of organisations. They get everyone to move in the right direction. I’m in favour of the benefits of meetings, but I am dead against the costs.
With respect to the current explosion of AI applications, I see most of them as automating tasks to save people time in their jobs. Interestingly, the tasks that are being automated first all have to do with communication. Whether it be writing a memo from just a few notes of content or taking a document and summarising it into its constituent points, these are communication tasks that are being made easier for the sender and recipient. Indeed, one of my favourite recent cartoons is this one.
There are two stories going on here. The first is that AI is useful in making communicating easier. The second is that had we realised what each of us really wanted; we wouldn’t even need the AI. Suffice it to say, existential angst comes with the territory.
One interesting AI application I saw in operation recently was Fireflies. This app recorded a Zoom meeting, transcribed it and then sent a list of action items to each participant. In other words, it took minutes and communicated what everyone had to do after the meeting.
The Dream
This is all very interesting, but I have wondered if this could all go further.
Here is what I have in mind. Suppose that I record all of the meetings that I participate in (with permissions yada yada yada). Then I train an AI chatbot to respond to questions and to ask questions as I would do in a meeting. I can then send that AI to the meeting as my agent and, with my voice and Turing Test style, take my place at the meeting. Afterwards, it would provide a summary of what went on and the action items for me.
To be sure, what I am imagining is a really good chatbot. It really is based on me and comes with all of my persuasive strengths and my collegiality floors. Others wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I could, of course, make my agent more polite and even better at selling my perspective but let’s not get carried away.
That would mean I wouldn’t have to attend the meetings. I would get the benefits — my voice was part of the conversation — without the costs — time spent in the meeting. Now this is automation that I could really get behind.
Why stop there? No one likes meetings, and so if this AI chatbot existed, surely it could be trained to be an agent of anyone.
Then, when a meeting is scheduled, we would all press our button to have our AI attend on our behalf; the AIs would interact with each other — something that would take seconds rather than hours — and then out would pop minutes of the meeting and a list of action items.
You wouldn’t even need to book a conference room, let alone supply doughnuts. If you all happened to be in the office, in lieu of being at the meeting, you could all hang out, drinking coffee and talking about what happened on The Mandalorian while you waited for the meeting outcome. At that time, you could all read the minutes and action items, go back to some smaller groups or pairs and complain about your colleagues’ perspectives as they manifested themselves in the meeting none of you was actually at.
Now *this* would be a real virtual meeting. Not the stuff Zuckerberg is imagining.
The funny thing about this dream of the automated meeting is how plausible it seems as something that could actually be a thing. This says much about how far AI has advanced recently. It also says much about how actually useful most meetings are.