When I ask about the task that admins hate the most, taking meeting minutes always tops the list. When the subject of artificial intelligence is brought up, admins are most excited about what AI can do to eliminate their most dreaded task.
We know that taking minutes isn’t easy. We either write too much or not enough, don’t understand what the group is often talking about, and struggle to decide what will matter in two minutes, two hours, two days, two weeks, and two months!
Having AI make those decisions seems like a perfect solution! AI can record your meeting, transcribe the audio, store it, extract information, and create minutes or action items from the recording. They work with Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet; you can also use them in in-person meetings. It’s fast and easy, right?
Not necessarily. There are naturally pros and cons of using AI for your corporate minutes.
Pros:
- Your organization can standardize expectations and create templates to ensure consistency and compliance. Imagine having everyone create minutes using the same template and ensuring that they are all similar. This would be much easier to create and so much easier to read and understand.
- AI-powered transcription is instantaneous. Your minutes are created immediately, ensuring that things aren’t forgotten or lost in a pile of work. The speed and accuracy is hard to beat.
- Tracking action items is a breeze, and combining your meeting minutes into your to-do list can be seamless. Imagine having all the deadlines automatically inserted into your calendar!
- Human error is removed. When taking notes manually in a meeting, missing a detail or deadline is easy. It’s hard to be an active listener as well as a note-taker. It is easy to misinterpret a comment or intention when relying on our judgment. AI can add valuable insights based on historical minutes if needed.
- The automation and productivity features make life easier for an admin. AI can even create meeting agendas, join your online meeting, extract all action items, or create a transcript or summary of your meeting.
- Many admins would argue that using AI for meeting minutes saves them countless hours with which they can be doing higher value tasks.
Let’s be honest: The value of using AI is high when you consider the efficiency, time and money savings, and standardized processes for organizations.
However, there are also cons (you knew there was a but coming), which are more substantial.
Cons:
- Privacy and data security is paramount! If you use an AI program, your information is processed on remote servers. This ultimately means that everything discussed while using your AI program is available for other AI programs. You are putting your organization at risk with the information you discuss being “available to the artificial intelligence database.” We have no idea or control over how this data could be used as they do not need your consent (using an AI program gives them permission).
- API vulnerabilities. If your system integrates with other applications via APIs (think calendar, task management, CRM, etc.), these are gateways to access your internal systems.
Some of the programs that offer AI meeting minutes are:
- Equal Time
- Fathom
- Fellow
- Fireflies
- Otter
- Notes by Dubber
- Nyota
- Sembly AI
- Flowers
Before you try any of these programs, you must get approval from the decision-makers at your organization. Please do not assume that because it is a low-level staff meeting, it will be fine if you don’t share corporate secrets. Get approval. You would hate to put your organization and your reputation at risk by using something you assume is innocent. Unfortunately, we know that while we have good intentions, many do not.
Am I suggesting AI for meeting minutes? Not yet. Once we can get regulations on the control of the information, I will look into it again. For the moment, using these types of software is too dangerous, in my opinion.
This article was written by Rhonda and not by AI.
