Problem at work? You'll be hearing from my chatbot

A flood of AI-generated complaints means a new kind of unwarranted hassle for HR and customer services.

- Pilita Clark

People say nothing funny ever happens on LinkedIn and in my experience, people are right.

But the other day, a colleague showed me a post on the site from a man named Chris who said he had started joining online meetings 30 seconds early, all the better to be discreetly recorded by the AI note-taking assistants now used to transcribe virtual meetings.

He then starts screaming that he is on the Titanic, which has just hit an iceberg, and needs help pronto, before carrying on normally for the rest of the meeting.

"When the meeting ends," he wrote, "everyone gets an e-mailed transcript where the AI summary is: 'Chris hit an iceberg, is trapped on a sinking ship, and general Q2 pricing updates.'"

I enjoyed this story and hope it travels far on the grounds that finally, someone may have found a good use for AI in the office.

Obviously, I hear constantly about the latest "use case" in the "AI space" that is going to make working life more productive, efficient and streamlined.

I also realise that scientists at Google DeepMind were joint winners of the 2024 Nobel chemistry prize for an AI model that is already helping to speed up work on intractable problems such as antibiotic resistance and plastic pollution.