There are more work meetings today than ever before.
"People are spending three times more time in meetings now than they were in 2020, which is quite an extraordinary increase," Sean Gallagher, a future of work expert, tells .
And as meeting technology has improved, certain artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities are appearing with increasing frequency, Dr Gallagher says.
"AI is going to move from being passive to being an active member within teams."
It's already listening in on our meetings, recording transcripts, generating notes and more.
So how should we feel about AI's presence in the room? And what problems should we try to mitigate before they happen?
How is AI used at work?
The use of AI in meetings is increasing, particularly in larger organisations, says Dr Gallagher, who is also the founder of consultancy and training organisation Humanova.
That's partly to ensure "better corporate memory" — that is, that while a lot gets discussed in meetings, a lot doesn't also get lost.
AI can record a meeting, but it can also transcribe everything discussed, provide a summary of the key points and any actions that arose, and deliver the documentation to everyone who attended the meeting.
Organisational psychologist Charlotte Rush is a regular AI user. For her, the benefits of AI are huge.
"AI is absolutely making my meetings more efficient," she says.
"It's making me more purposeful with how I run my meetings. But most importantly, after my meetings … when I need to actually work on the action points, I know exactly what I need to do. And I can really easily communicate with other people that I'm meeting with what they need to do as well."
AI can also prompt someone with targeted suggestions to help them contribute more to the meeting. And afterwards it can analyse what took place, for example by registering the tones of the voices in the room and whether they were collegial or tense.
Dr Gallagher says it's also useful to bring a team together on a particular matter.
"One of the great things about AI is it doesn't judge … [it] can ensure that everyone is being heard in the meeting," she says.
"If everyone feels included, and if everyone has a quality of voice, then I think a lot of the issues around disputes or disagreements within meetings can be alleviated."
What are the rules when using AI at work?
Plenty of Australians are sceptical about AI use — according to this year's Reuters Digital News Report nearly 60 per cent of us are uneasy about news made by AI, for example — even with human oversight.
Indeed, media organisation Crikey recently announced it had banned AI, pointing to — among other concerns — its racial and gender biases.
Even those who are in favour of using AI in a workplace say there are important ground rules that must be applied to the technology.
Dr Gallagher says humans must have "critical oversight" with any AI use.
"The number one golden rule in working with AI is that the human makes the decision.
"The human is responsible for the factual accuracy of whatever is being produced. And the human is also responsible for any ethical or biased considerations that may come out of the AI's output," he says.
"I think it is really critical to ensure that we don't fall asleep at the wheel."
And before you bring AI into a meeting, it's really important to ask permission, says professional speaking coach John Yeo.
"It's important to be transparent about the use of AI and recordings in meetings," he says.
This could either be by flagging it yourself or by leaning on the pop-ups or audio alerts that some AI tools provide in a meeting.
Mr Yeo believes people should be cautious when using AI, but also that it's important to acknowledge its worth.
And it's not an all-or-nothing proposition.
"I think we need to be both objective and real about the value it creates and make some objective decisions about how we like that to be included in our lives or excluded from our lives," he says.
How do you ensure privacy with AI?
Ms Rush says it's important to have parameters around how the data captured through AI might be used in future.
"[If in] five years I see that something I said many years ago is being referenced, I'm not sure how I would feel about that. And I'm not sure what the rules are and what should be the rules around deleting information, for example once an employee leaves an organisation," she says.
Dr Gallagher says the number one indicator of successful AI use at work is the presence of a formal company policy.
"It's about guardrails and ethical and safe and responsible use of AI. But it's also about the vision and values that the company has around using AI, to alleviate and to mitigate fears," he says.
"Most people fear AI in terms of, 'it's going to take my job', or 'it's going to see that I'm not as good at my job as people think that I am'.
"So the policy is really important to make people feel comfortable that the AI is here to support you to do better work."
A company policy should also clarify protocols around how much data AI is given access to.
"All of those things need to be worked out," he says.
Will AI replace human jobs?
Dr Gallagher is hopeful that AI will help workers, rather than replace them.
"[With AI] they don't have to spend as much time organising, coming up with the agenda or going back through the last three meetings' minutes, as well as other supplementary material, to come up to speed to where things are at," he says.
"I could see very soon that we could [for example] in a team meeting, ask the AI to do a three-minute recap, for example of the status of something, and that AI would be across everything.
"We've all gone into meetings [where] we're going through email trails, we're going through documents, we're trying to find what was said last time to bring us up to speed. That is an enormous waste of productivity."
And he says according to soon to be published Swinburne-Deloitte research, high-frequency AI users — those who use AI not just in meetings, but in their daily jobs — report being more productive and producing higher-quality work. They also report better wellbeing, more optimism about the future and less fear of the technology.
"So it really is about some hand-holding the organisations need to do [with their staff] through having a policy in place [and] providing formal training around the technology," he says.
Mr Yeo believes AI is "a huge boon for anyone who really wants to focus more on the connection and the experience and the conversation flow — as opposed to [thinking], 'Am I writing that minute down? Am I remembering to do that later on?'.
"So if anything it allows the human being to flourish, if we let it. But we still need to shape, direct and understand what AI can and will do … and manage that appropriately."
