Google Meet's New AI Will Be Able To Go To Meetings For You (theverge.com) 60
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: At its Cloud Next conference today, Google revealed a handful of new AI-powered features coming soon to Meet. One of the biggest new AI-enabled features is the ability for Google's Duet AI to take notes in real time: click "take notes for me," and the app will capture a summary and action items as the meeting is going on. If you're late to a meeting, Google will be able to show you a mid-meeting summary so that you can catch up on what happened. During the call, you'll be able to talk privately with a Google chatbot to go over details you might have missed. And when the meeting is over, you can save the summary to Docs and come back to it after the fact; it can even include video clips of important moments. These AI-enabled features could be a way to free up people from being dedicated meeting-note scribes and make it easier to catch up both during and after calls.
Another new Meet feature lets Duet "attend" a meeting on your behalf. On a meeting invite, you can click an "attend for me" button, and Google can auto-generate some text about what you might want to discuss. Those notes will be viewable to attendees during the meeting so that they can discuss them. This could be another handy time-saving feature. If you're double-booked or suddenly have to bail on a meeting because of something going on in your life, I can see the value in sharing some notes about what you'd planned to bring up. But I worry that people might use this feature to dodge meetings they really should attend and add an unnecessary burden to the people who actually show. (If everyone in the meeting sends their AI assistant, I'm told, Meet will figure it out and quickly end the call.) This feature is a little ways out, arriving sometime next year to Labs.
Another new Meet feature lets Duet "attend" a meeting on your behalf. On a meeting invite, you can click an "attend for me" button, and Google can auto-generate some text about what you might want to discuss. Those notes will be viewable to attendees during the meeting so that they can discuss them. This could be another handy time-saving feature. If you're double-booked or suddenly have to bail on a meeting because of something going on in your life, I can see the value in sharing some notes about what you'd planned to bring up. But I worry that people might use this feature to dodge meetings they really should attend and add an unnecessary burden to the people who actually show. (If everyone in the meeting sends their AI assistant, I'm told, Meet will figure it out and quickly end the call.) This feature is a little ways out, arriving sometime next year to Labs.
Re:This Should Be Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Any meeting that can effectively be attended by AI should be cancelled.
Re:This Should Be Good (Score:4, Insightful)
1) yes many meetings are stupid. There are only 2 kinds of useful meetings: the informational meeting where someone shares information with 1+ recipients, answers questions then ends meeting. And meetings with a pre-provided agenda that end when the agenda has been completed, not when time runs out.
2) your job is whatever the person paying your checks says your job is. If they say your job is attending pointless meetings then yes that is a stupid waste of their money but it is still your job. If you don't like your job, get another one. I had about a dozen jobs in 30 years. When a job sucked, I left. Very simple. But while I was there I did whatever I was asked to do within a business context. They were paying for my time. Any extra benefit they got from my skills, experience, etc, was just a bonus for them.
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Actually, I learnt that your job is to make the customer happy -- no more, no less. The job's description doesn't matter.
A long time ago I came to a client to install and deploy software we wrote at a new location (while I was/am a programmer rather than a deployment person, it was a small company). And the infrastructure to do the work was not yet ready -- the place was full of workers who installed drywalls, there was no network (modern ethernet-in-walls was not yet a popular thing, too), and computers
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For the typical corporate job, it is making your boss happy.
For client facing jobs like yours, it should be making the client happy within reasonable business bounds (obviously don't give them everything for free, etc). (Be careful taking on additional liability, though. If that physical install had gone bad you could've been in hot water. Get someone to sign off in writing that you're doing that to CYA).
And sometimes you're just fucked because the client and your boss want different things. My last job
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That's exactly my point. If you're being told to do things which will cause you even more pain later and no one will listen then get the hell out.
In this case, we're talking about stupid meetings. Every company has them, but some more/less than others. If your company or boss has too many for you then move on if you can't skip them. That's all I'm saying here. But to say it isn't your job to go to stupid meetings your boss wants you to go to is false. The problem is that going to stupid meetings _is_
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Hold on, I'm not saying I didn't work hard or smart. I did. Very much so. But at the end of the day, my boss is signing the pay checks. I have been asked/told to do any number of things over the years that I knew were wrong, stupid, etc. Some of them cost the company millions of dollars. But when the CEO stares you down and says in "that" tone, "Just fucking do it, I don't have time for this!" you do it. Yes, that happened. And yes that was about $2m pissed away. But he was happy and I kept my job
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Just wait until all the meeting attendees are AI proxies for the intended attendees, because just cancelling useless meetings isn't a thing that most people do.
I'm sure that meeting won't be a massive waste of electricity to "decide" that the answer to the question for which the meeting was scheduled is "a sack of potatoes flying at Mach 3 headed for Jupiter" or some other complete nonsense caused by AI's attenuation of actual rational thought and amplification of AI nonsense noise coming out of the imperfe
Re: This Should Be Good (Score:2)
bingo.
apologies to filbert
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"Hey Google, why is the meeting summary empty?" (Score:5, Funny)
"...if you were at the meeting, you'd understand. You're welcome."
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Just 60 minutes of mindless PowerPoint presentation that sucked the soul out of all participants. Good thing AI have no soul yet.
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How Can You Be in Two Places at Once (Score:1)
How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All?
What's the point? (Score:2)
If an AI can join the meeting for me, that there was no need for me to be in the meeting.
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It's just a convenient way for management to know who to put at the top of the layoff list for the next cuts.
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Not for me.
I'd think about using it to figure which employees figure all the damned meetings (99.999% of them) are useless and their time could be better spent actually doing work.
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Its a little more complicated than that.
There are lot of things like team meetings where, some decisions are made democratically, input might be solicited etc, where things you need to know about will come out of the meeting and you not being there just means you don't get to have that input.
Having the AI speech-to-text and than generate a summary is probably better than sitting thru a recording.
However I don't know why anyone else in the meeting would want some kind of AI avatar for you to be present in yo
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and you not being there just means you don't get to have that input.
cc me a copy of the minutes. Job done.
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Don't worry, it doesn't matter how good it is. They will get thousands of people to sign up and then cancel the whole thing in a year or so.
Other than search is there anything at all they've built in house that has been successful? Even most of the things they buy get killed.
I don't know why they have more than a handful of search engineers for new product development.
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Other than search is there anything at all they've built in house that has been successful?
Gmail? Also, did they write or buy Google Maps?
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Also, did they write or buy Google Maps?
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a real-time traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005.
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Thanks. Wasn't sure whether that was in-house or not. But I believe GMail was in-house.
Meetings for noone (Score:1)
Just wait until all the meeting attendants are AI because everyone was too busy. I wonder what that transcript would look like...
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"Kill all humans..."
-- Bender
wat (Score:2)
Go to meetings? They're going to issue me a robot?
The word you're looking for is "attend"
This is why real sites have editors familiar with the language.
Hey google... (Score:3)
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Real Genius. (Score:1)
ST: TOS (Score:1)
Who benefits from these sorts of meetings? No one (Score:2)
it can even include video clips of important moments
If anything less than 95% of your meeting in highlighted, you might want to challenge why you're having the meeting in the first place.
I know it's a business trope that's practically as old as time, but it never ceases to baffle me how despite nearly everyone involved recognizing that they are sitting in pointless meetings all the time, they continue to do so because they feel powerless to push back against the system that created those pointless meetings in the first place. Those always strike me as busine
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they continue to do so because they feel powerless to push back against the system that created those pointless meetings in the first place.
The meeting might be pointless but sometimes I relish that, especially when I've been working on something difficult and I've hit a roadblock.
If I sit and read a book or go for a walk to take my mind off it and give my hindbrain a chance to work out subconsciously then I'm engaging in "private time", my boss insists that because I'm "not working" I need to stay later to make it up. Meanwhile should I not bother paying attention to the "pointless" meeting and come up with the solution during whatever daydre
These aren't the meetings you're looking for (Score:1)
If a video chat is pointless, you can stick it in the background and attend to other things.
Meanwhile, Google is part of the push to make everyone come to the office in person. Maybe let us know when Google decides solving the problem takes priority over alleviating the least of its symptoms.
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To the downmodders .... (Score:2)
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So ... you don't go to the office to work, so much as to flirt and make friends?
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There's nothing wrong with making friends while working or going out for drinks with cow-orkers after work (really helps if they're all in the same city/building). Why does everything need to be so compartmentalized, especially in Anglo countries?
Doing everything from home, not riding transit (trains! lovely trains!), only meeting people if they're family, you know them already, or you talk online ... seems like a lonely life. They're taken away "third places" in the US. Now they're coming for "second p
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If you want to give up time with friends and family, and skip the chance to develop your own interests outside of work, in order to go drinking with people who will forget your name 5 minutes after a layoff, that's your choice. Head on over to the office and stay as long as you like.
But I don't see how those of us who prefer the opposite are supposed to take your ideas about loneliness seriously.
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Yes, you're really into going to the office to make friends, meet dates. It's your go-to argument. You seem to think that anyone who disagrees must be a lonely tech bro who is missing out on relationships.
When you were in the office, did you not notice that there are people who are already married and have families who need them? That there are folks taking art classes, going dancing, playing soccer? What about the folks with elderly parents that need help at home? Never? In all your office chats, did it
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s/ hate have
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Let me just play some of that back real quick.
"Data is data. Anecdata is anecdata." ...
"but the fact is that many relationships (both partner and platonic) start at work. WFH reduces social and networking opportunities for people who are already shy."
"Being with the **sperm donor/receptacle** and **rug rats** all the time is unhealthy..."
'A lot of relationships and marriages broke up during COVID lockdowns where people were stuck with *"loved ones"* [inferring sarcasm] all of the fuckin' time.'
"I love trai
I have a boss to do that (Score:2)
Google app tendencies (Score:1)
Summary (Score:2)
Can't wait to receive an email summary of a meeting like this:
Soon freed of meetings (Score:2)
I want this NOW (Score:2)
Never mind being able to skip a meeting. I'd *love* to have AI recording action items or other important points, even for meetings I do attend. This is especially true if there is a lot of conversation going on, as opposed to a presentation. Sometimes, I forget to take some notes that I should have taken, because I'm too busy engaging in the conversation.
Re: I want this NOW (Score:2)
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Judging by MS Teams transcription feature, I'd say it often does better with strong accents than *I* do.
Re: I want this NOW (Score:2)
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And that's a problem AI could definitely help with.
Soon, meetings with nothing but bots (Score:2)
Hey Google, please attend this meeting and send me a summary, so I don't have to go.
A bot will present the points, and a bunch of other bots will take notes.
Sounds like heaven to me!
How long before... (Score:2)
I'm assuming that teachers using virtual classrooms will do their best to prevent this kind of non-attendance... but how long before tech savvy students find ways to do it anyway?
Then again, I find myself reflecting upon the '80s classic movie, Real Genius, where a very dated but potentially parallel scenario [youtube.com] plays out, all the way to the inevitable final state...
Dystopian (Score:2)