32 comments

  • fmbb an hour ago

    This is actually great.

    If we can get only AIs to take meetings we can save a lot of work in offices.

    Zoom has the same dream: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24168733/zoom-ceo-ai-clone...

    Eventually we can also decouple scheduling meetings and reading summaries from humans. And then we can all spend time working instead of in meetings.

    The robots can archive all their summaries, and have follow up meetings to track status of action points they invented. As long as they do not bother humans it will be a great boon to productivity.

    • TrackerFF 9 minutes ago

      It is gonna be great when everyone sends their AI avatars to these meetings. Just LLM models talking to each other. Would be interesting to see what kind of output such meetings would generate.

      • Dalewyn 2 minutes ago

        Isn't that essentially the stock market trading floor scene?

    • cookiengineer an hour ago

      Or, you know, humans could just get their shit together and use asynchronous communication channels in the first place.

      Using AI for this is like a trying to solve a self-created problem. If human meeting culture would have just used an issue tracker and e.g. emails for this, this all would not have been necessary.

      Human meeting culture exists only because the tools for synchronizing states is so bad in its UX/UI that there is no better way to do it. If Teams would have had a better UX, they would not have needed AI bots/avatars for this problem.

      • lloeki an hour ago

        Although due to Poe's law I'm unsure if GP was earnest, I elected to read it with a /s modifier.

      • xattt 23 minutes ago

        To add to this, anti-social assholes who kill team jive tend to hide from responsibility with e-mails. Even when it needs to be a meeting.

        They need to be dragged out of their comfort zone kicking-and-screaming for public display for the pleasure of others.

  • d2049 4 days ago

    I'm a bit hesitant to give my voice away to really any company. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine the ways this could go wrong?

    • maxerickson 24 minutes ago

      There's tech that can do a reasonable approximation using a sample a couple of seconds long.

      Any control over that is going to be through social and legal mechanisms, it isn't going to work to try to prevent access to the needed data.

    • plagiarist 43 minutes ago

      I do prefer a robot standing in instead of me to fulfill the little power trip calling attendance. There is little reason the updates cannot be async in text or via the JIRA tickets I already have to do. A robot could add in pull request data too.

      But it doesn't need to be my voice. It in fact should be illegal for Microsoft to use my voice for training without my express consent, and even then they must delete all models and data about it when requested. And it should be illegal for an employer to request or expect it.

  • rnabhsj an hour ago

    "My voice is my passport" (quote from some action movie). They claim that they do not store biometric data. For now. Wait until the next rug pull where they'll claim that your voice and all conversations belong to them.

    Which raises the question: What happens on all the "free" communication platforms like Google Meet and so on? Are the conversations recorded and mined?

    The data collection business Salesforce had an "AI" meeting summary feature already years ago.

  • pluc 2 hours ago

    Microsoft keeps creating the best tools for phishing.

  • INTPenis 2 hours ago

    The AI hype is so strong that they're rolling out a feature to forge people's voices BEFORE they roll out the feature to sign your own voice cryptographically.

    • Cumpiler69 2 hours ago

      People were naive enough to upload their personal details and pictures to Facebook/Tinder/Google over a decade ago without any cryptographic signing.

      What makes you think they won't make the same mistake again with their voice? You just have to bait people with features of convenience in return for their data.

      There's a reason history keeps repeating itself.

  • ujikoluk an hour ago

    Would be very interested in trying an English-to-English mode to wash away my ESL accent.

  • yen223 an hour ago

    Is this something that people are clamouring for?

    How many of y'all would be using this?

  • wkat4242 4 days ago

    Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/rYaZ57Bn4pQ

    It was a joke video from the onion about outsourcing their own jobs to India. This is kinda the same but with AI.

    I know it's only for translation now but how long until "copilot" joins meetings on my behalf?

    • marcus0x62 an hour ago

      Real life, but China instead of India: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21043693

      Only tangentially related, but hustle culture meets remote work: https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed

    • rnabhsj 41 minutes ago

      This is a great comment. Apart from a phishing tool, this is an outsourcing tool.

      Remember that we need more people to learn how to code (the corporate nonsense that many developers here and elsewhere amplified in 2018)!

    • hulitu 2 days ago

      > I know it's only for translation now but how long until "copilot" joins meetings on my behalf?

      Well, they have my voice (Teams), they have my image and biometrics (Windows Hello for business), they know everything i do a the computer (Recall) so they can replace me with an AI.

      Just think at the next headlines: Microsoft increases the price of Office 365 bundling a new feature: virtual employees.

      • sunaookami 2 hours ago

        >virtual employees

        Then we hold virtual meetings where virtual managers create PowerPoint slides with AI and virtual employees "listen" and in the end AI summarizes everything into something no one will ever read? :D

        • tempodox an hour ago

          > something no one will ever read?

          No, they train the next LLM on it.

          • lloeki 36 minutes ago

            While grey goo is about matter, this appears to be a grey energy scenario: one where machines run amok eating all possible energy in an exponential feedback loop of uselessness, driving civilisations to oblivion.

            While the civilisations are long-gone, they build up the Kardashev ladder for the sole purpose of producing more of nothing.

            Finally, all cosmic resources being expanded, they shut down. It is unknown whether in a brief flash of self-awareness, realising the meaninglessness of their purpose, the machines commited suicide.

    • _def 2 hours ago

      If the meetig consists only of copilots then, I might be fine with it

    • gtirloni 3 hours ago

      AGI? It's either a few days or a thousand year away.

  • bastloing 25 minutes ago

    Nice option to have, can't wait until they expand it to more commonly used languages of the world.

  • gtirloni 3 hours ago

    They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should -- Dr. Ian Malcolm

  • blisterpeanuts 35 minutes ago

    I’d much rather have meetings go full Discord. A chat room is easier to deal with when you’re busy and trying to multitask. Having to drop everything and interact in a rigidly structured audiovisual format feels very constraining and counterproductive these days. A properly trained AI could stand in for you as needed.

  • riiii 2 hours ago

    > clone their voices so they can have their sound-alikes speak to others in meetings in different languages

    Yeah, no. Automatic text translation is "ok" but automatic translation direct into a work meeting in your voice? Enjoy your HR meetings and lawsuit for unfair dismissal based on botched translation.

    • user432678 2 hours ago

      Or the other way around — enjoy swearing and be mean during the calls saying “it’s just a botched translation”.

  • gardenhedge 3 hours ago

    I wonder if this could help with pronouncing words in other languages. That's always been hard for me