11/29/2023

Utilizing Chatbot for Work Meetings

AI tools can summarize key points from work-related meetings

Nobody ever needed more meetings in their lives. But the Zoom/COVID era has made the stress of meetings even more acute. According to a Microsoft study released earlier this year, more than two-thirds of workers say they “don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday.” And the chief culprit of disrupted productivity is "inefficient meetings."

Microsoft, as it happens, is rolling out a potential solution for this. Last week, it released a product called Copilot that uses AI tools to summarize the Teams meetings that you’re not able to attend (or, um, that you decide you’re not able to attend). Copilot can distill discussions made in email threads around the meeting, schedule follow-ups, create PowerPoints, and respond to some rudimentary questions about the tone of the discussion like, “What were the strongest opinions?"

As with everything AI touches these days, there’s something at once liberating and mildly terrifying about this. To be sure, Copilot only exists because there’s a real problem in the workplace around meetings. “I don’t think the majority of people have meetings to get things done and be productive,” Clemson University Professor Christopher Flathmann told The Daily Beast in a story about the technology.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.