A big problem with AI note takers
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“Can you give some linguistic insights into AI note takers in meetings? Sometimes it creeps me out… I was talking to my teammate about it before our meeting started and she said I was overreacting and that I need to get with the times...”
There is an excellent reason why you may be feeling anxious or concerned or creeped out by having AI note takers attend your meeting. And it’s this:
Research has shown that the number one factor affecting your speech is the identity of the person or people you’re speaking with. More than anything else. We call this audience design.
So when one or more of those people isn’t a person but an AI note taker? It makes everything more complicated — and potentially more dangerous.
Breaking down the audience
Any time people are communicating, there are five distinct roles that can be played.
The speaker. Note that sometimes we’re talking to ourselves and are also our own audience.
The addressee. The addressee is the other person in a conversation. When we’re speaking English, this is the person addressed as you.
The auditor. Sometimes another person is present, like when two people are standing together and someone else comes up and talks to only one of them. The third person is still technically part of the conversation and can potentially jump in.
The overhearer. The overhearer isn’t officially part of the conversation and in many cultures, really shouldn’t jump in.* But they are still part of the speech event, because the people having a conversation know that they are there. For example, an overhearer may be sitting at the next table — and note that for speakers of sign languages, you can overhear from much further away than for oral languages.
The eavesdropper. The eavesdropper is an unknown quantity. First, they may or may not exist. Second, in some locations, an eavesdropper is assumed to be hostile. These days, I hear lots of complaints about tech companies eavesdropping on what should be private conversations, like through virtual assistants such as Alexa or cell phone microphones.
So which of these audience roles has the most influence?
It is usually the local addressee, someone who is right there in person or an online meeting or a text chain.
But sometimes when a large audience is involved, the most influential audience members are people you know nothing about. Same is true for the unknown eavesdropper you know nothing about, or the eavesdropper you can make assumptions about.
It can be really hard to design your speech to be appropriate when you’re not sure who your audience is and what they’re going to do after they receive your words.
This is one reason why so many “regular” people seem so awkward when they’re interviewed on television. And it’s a big reason why throwing AI note takers into meetings can complicate things.
Your choices have meaning
Here are three examples that show the different ways speakers can be influenced by their audience.
1. Pronunciation
Allan Bell studied New Zealand newsreaders who were recording stories for different radio stations. The readers were in the same studio, using the same the same equipment and technical staff, and reading the same text. Everything was the same except for the client who would be getting the recording.
When Bell studied the recordings, he found that the newsreaders switched up their style and their pronunciation depending on who they thought was going to be hearing them. When the recording was going to the “fancy” news station, they upped the frequency of how often they used “posh” pronunciations. And when the audience was assumed to be from a lower socioeconomic bracket, they dialed the “posh” pronunciations way down.
2. Language choice
When I did my dissertation research in post-Soviet Russia, I was most interested in getting recordings of people speaking in a mix of two languages at once — Tatar and Russian.
So I asked Tatar college students over to my apartment to make recordings of themselves “just talking normally,” since I knew this language mix was a common style for them.
But much to my dismay, they never spoke for my recorder in that code-switched style that mixed Tatar and Russian together. I would overhear people speaking in that style on the streets. But never for my recordings.
I ended up writing a whole academic article about why. Long story short, the eavesdropper, the unknown audience member, was playing the most important role. These speakers wanted only the “best” and “cleanest” and “purest” Tatar to be reported to linguists and other academics. They couldn’t speak “normally” because the most important audience was scholars in the US who they didn’t know. I called it “cleaning up for company.”
(At other times, it was secret police eavesdroppers playing the most important role in conversations in my apartment and elsewhere. When people wanted to tell me something particularly sensitive, they would suggest a walk on back streets or over a nearby bridge. Honestly, it sometimes felt like I was living in a spy movie. But they were right to do it.)
3. Word choice
Viola Davis was recently a guest on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. (It’s a fun conversation, I recommend it.)
When I was listening to the episode, I was struck by how Davis felt the need to explain why sometimes she would have a longish silence before responding. Early in the interview, she says, “You know… I always negotiate, Amy. So if you feel like I take a long pause, I’m just negotiating what I’m about to say. So I don’t step on toes…and don’t ever work in the industry again.”
Davis was more influenced by the eventual podcast audience than the addressee sitting right in front of her. You get the feeling that if she and Poehler were alone in a room together (and she knew Poehler could be trusted), she would be a lot less diplomatic and a lot more willing to talk specific smack about specific people.
AI note takers
If you’re in an online meeting, throwing an AI note taker into the mix can make audience design a lot more complicated.
When it comes to video recording a meeting, software platforms like Zoom require consent up front. You choose to opt in, and there is an audio notification “recording in progress” and a visual notification that says REC with a blinking red dot. So you know. You can then design your communication with the potentially large, far-reaching, and unknown audience in mind.
But AI note takers may not notify you or get consent. And they may not give audio or visual reminders that they are at work.
I’ve seen a few complaints online where people only learned that the AI program Granola was taking notes toward the end of a meeting — or even after the meeting was over.
Without consent, or without an obvious reminder like a blinking red dot and the word REC, it can be easy to either not know a notetaker is at work or to forget.
And thinking that you’re interacting with one audience and then learning that, in fact, there was maybe another larger audience can be the stuff of nightmares.
Plus, when you add in an unknown audience who will be able to read your exact words, it really adds to your cognitive load. Remember, we are always designing our speech for our audience. Adding in eavesdroppers or unknown audience members makes it much, much harder.
So audience design and the unknown audience is why AI notetakers can feel creepy.
What can you do? Consider setting up some ground rules for consent and notification for all your online meetings, and setting up ground rules for who can and cannot access meeting notes after the fact.
Because the more you can pin down who will be able to access your words and what they will do with that access, the more you can focus on the task at hand.
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*Where I grew up in New York, overhearers jump in all the time, especially to give advice about where to find good pizza or what subway line to take.
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