Don't blame the AI messenger

Some bosses want to ban AI assistants during meetings, but their presence makes us all better and more attentive attendees

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Barry Collins is available for meetings between 7pm and 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays, chiefly in the pub. Book in with his AI assistant at barry@ mediabc.co.uk.

One of the many things I don’t miss about working in an office is the meetings.

When I edited PC Pro, at least half my day was spent in meeting rooms. Meetings with my publisher, my team, the ads team, marketing, subscriptions, press briefings. I once had a meeting where the athlete Roger Black brought doughnuts to my desk. This was the point I decided to give up drinking.

That was getting on for 15 years ago. Nowadays, you're probably not shuttling from one glass cubicle to another, but sat in front of your screen, jockeying between Teams, Zoom and Google Meet. Maybe a Slack Huddle or two in between. You don’t have to make polite conversation by the watercooler or loom like Reggie Kray at the door to hurry up an overrunning meeting in your booked room, but the meetings drain is still real. It’s just moved online.

Little wonder, then, that people are increasingly tempted to send an AI proxy to their meetings. Services such as Otter, Teams and Google all allow you to log into a meeting, switch off the camera and have an AI assistant transcribe the meeting, delivering a summary of all the key takeaways and action points once it’s over. Why bother going at all?