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More and more business meetings have a nonhuman participant: AI.
People are increasingly enlisting AI assistants to sit in on their calls and meetings at work, relying on the technology to record, take notes, and generate summaries or transcripts after the fact.
And while many of the etiquette rules around work are well-established, the best practices around AI in a meeting setting represent a new and evolving Wild West. Do you tell your coworkers you’re using AI? Do you boot your tech assistant from the meeting if an attendee is uncomfortable with it?
We asked Daniel Post Senning and Lizzie Post, etiquette experts with the Emily Post Institute, to weigh in on the topic. Their book, “Emily Post’s Business Etiquette,” which touches on AI in the workplace, goes on sale May 20.
“Any time you record, you want to let someone know,” Daniel Post Senning told BI.
“It’s just nice to give people a heads-up when something different, unexpected, or that’s going to record them is going to be a part of the equation,” said Lizzie Post. “Just to give them a heads-up about what they’re going to see, what they’re going to interact with.”
You can also ask if anyone would like a copy of the AI-generated transcript or summary after the call.
“It makes perfect sense that you might say to somebody why that recording is in place and what benefit they might get from it,” Post Senning added. “I’ve learned that if I describe the benefits, all of a sudden they’re excited about it and they get the same benefit out of it.”
But you should be prepared to stop the recording or other usage of an AI assistant if greeted with pushback from hesitant coworkers.
“If someone says no, they’re not comfortable with it, they don’t like it, they don’t like the whole idea of it, or they just don’t like being recorded, be willing to shut it off,” he added. If you’re not, be prepared for them not to participate in the meeting.
As more people experiment with ChatGPT and other AI tools in their personal lives and at work, the etiquette surrounding their use at work is still developing.
“AI made it into the book, but it’s one where the leaps in it and the ways that people are using it are more ubiquitous and different than they were even six months ago,” said Post Senning.
“That’s an area that’s moving very fast right now, and the core advice wouldn’t be any different, but I think the space that it would take up in the book and the ways we would talk about it — that would be a likely difference in another edition that came out even six months later or a year later.”
Has your or a friend’s use of AI led to tension at work or in your friend group? Contact the reporter at [email protected]
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