人工智能给糟糕的会议画上句号？

会议是许多企业和公司的常规组成部分。但很多人认为会议是耗时、枯燥和无效的。有理论证实，人工智能可能是帮助人们组织更好、更高效的会议的答案。人工智能是怎么办到的？

 

Business meetings are, arguably, a necessary part of any organisation¹ where people work collectively to accomplish a goal. But badly managed, meetings can be unproductive, boring and feel like a complete waste of time. In a recent survey conducted by governance technology firm eShare, it was found that the average UK employee spends over 10 hours weekly preparing for and attending meetings – approximately 50% of which they consider unnecessary. However, there are theories that technology could improve things. 

 

It's "very feasible" for an AI to be able to recognise when one person is hijacking² a meeting, or if a circular discussion keeps returning to a single issue, says James Campanini, from videoconferencing company, BlueJeans. "If no new points are made after a while, the AI could suggest to wrap up," says Cynthia Rudin, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But AI isn’t quite there yet.

 

"If AI can do most of the mundane³ and drudgery⁴ work during business meetings, that leaves more space for humans to think about strategy and vision," believes Niki Iliadis at the Big Innovation centre, London, an innovation hub in AI. This seems to be true. The prefecture of Osaka in Japan started using an AI as a minute taker to transcribe⁵ and summarise⁶ the 450 annual cabinet meetings. It has halved⁷ the time needed to produce summaries and cut staff overtime⁸, claims the prefecture.

 

AI can also help with the matter of attendance. If a meeting with irrelevant⁹ subject matter is called, or if it's an an inconvenient¹⁰ time, an AI could be used to decide who should attend the meeting and when it should be, says Elise Keith from Lucid¹¹ Meetings, a US-based meeting management platform.

 

Finally, one Stockholm start-up, Mentimeter, allows meeting  attendees to give anonymous¹² feedback about a discussion. Using the software, participants can make open-ended responses, submit comments or vote in multiple-choice quizzes. This has "fundamentally changed the dynamics¹³ of a presentation," says Austin Broad from financial services firm AFH Wealth Management.

 

While tools that can create agendas, send meeting invitations, distribute the minutes, and keep track of action items should improve effectiveness, they are still in development. Let's hope that if or when they do arrive, they will meet our expectations.

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