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The amount of time workers spend in meetings has tripled over the past four years. Which would be fine if workers felt that meetings were a productive use of their time. The opposite is often true; however, with 71% of workers calling their meetings unproductive, according to research. This isn’t helpful, particularly when consumers demand better and faster responses from the companies they trust than ever before.
Enter generative AI, a powerful tool organizations can leverage to do more with less. Generative AI adoption rates are nothing short of dizzying. ChatGPT in particular gained 100 million users in just 3 months — an unprecedented adoption rate when compared to other disruptive pieces of technology, such as mobile phones or the internet.
While much has been made of how generative AI affects creativity, companies like Zoom are looking for ways to deploy generative AI to take care of low-level mundane tasks — freeing workers to accomplish higher-level objectives. At Zoom’s recent Work Transformation Summit, Chief Transformation Officer Xuedong (XD) Huang sat down with CEO of the Atlantic Nicholas Thompson for a fireside chat on how generative AI can be used to improve worker productivity and the employee experience during meetings.
Reduce Distractions
As XD points out, meetings are the most important business function. This will only increase as more organizations move toward a hybrid working model. According to recent Reworked research, 26% of organizations envision that the next year will bring a substantial increase in remote working. Further, 42% of organizations are seeing increased employee interaction through technology tools such as Zoom or Slack as a result of remote/distributed work adoption.
But if workers spend all their time taking notes during virtual meetings, then they aren’t really present in the moment, able to think strategically or contribute productively to the conversation. Thanks to generative AI, workers can have their meeting notes transcribed automatically, freeing workers to participate more fully in each meeting they attend. “People go to meetings to solve problems,” XD said. Generative AI transcription lets workers keep that objective.
Increase Communication
Globalization and a push to improve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are just some of the factors leading to a workforce from sometimes wildly divergent backgrounds. As organizations continue their push to increase the number of diverse opinions in their workforce, it’s important that they also do what they can to facilitate communication between workers.
Communication is a key part of any meetings, and the level to which all participants can make themselves understood plays a critical role in meeting effectiveness. Communication can fall apart if teams can’t understand each other due to disparate language skill levels. Using technology to remove the language barriers between native and non-native speakers allows global teams to work together more effectively and reduce the potential for misunderstandings. “Our AI Companion can take notes for you, identify speakers or clarify what was said in the moment,” said XD.
Facilitate Follow-up, With a Privacy-First Mindset
When employees use generative AI for meeting transcription, they can more easily share those notes with meeting attendees or use the transcription as the building blocks of their own after-action summaries.
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While next-generation meeting transcription is making workers’ lives easier, it shouldn’t come at the cost of privacy and security. The meteoric rise of generative AI and its capabilities in particular, is concerning for over 60% of adults in the US, according to recent research. Zoom’s AI Companion shares meeting notes only with meeting participants, as the company is committed to keeping privacy top of mind. “We don’t use transcriptions to train our AI, as privacy is very important to us,” said XD.
How Zoom AI Companion Makes Meetings Easier
Throughout the keynote, XD and Nicholas explored the various ways that Zoom AI Companion was designed to improve workflows in the age of overabundant meetings. One of AI Companion’s chief capabilities is to join meetings and transcribe what’s being said in the moment. By delegating the low-level task of meeting transcription to technology, workers are freed to participate fully in each meeting they attend, devoting their entire self to the task without worrying about making sure they capture what’s been said. While in the meeting, if they haven’t caught what’s been said, they can query the AI for meaning. This makes it easier for workers to be understood and reduces miscommunication. Finally, with a complete meeting transcription at their fingertips, workers can share their notes with participants and use AI Companion to generate meeting summaries for easy identification of next steps. Learn more at the link below!
Learn more about Zoom AI Companion at zoom.us. Get access to the full Work Transformation Summit on demand at explore.zoom.us.
