You join a meeting with a coworker. Your coworker has enabled an AI tool to automatically take notes and summarize the meeting. They do not ask for consent to turn it on. The tool mischaracterizes what you discuss.
I just had a Teams meeting where a business partner added their AI assistant to the call and said that it would record audio/video for training purposes.
They didn’t ask for permission or anything, just joined and turned it on. Like wtf? Where does it store the data? What is it used for?
If I wasn’t forced to attend I would have left then and there.
You say, “what’s the privacy policy for your AI assistant?” and then keep asking questions like that until the person running the call gets annoyed that this has taken over their agenda and they’ll ban people from using unapproved AI agents on calls.
“Where is the data stored?” “Has this tool been approved by IT?” “Did you get consent from everyone to be recorded?” “Does the employee handbook say you can record other employees?” “Is my voice going to be used by an AI company to train a model?” etc.
Call me a coward but I can’t blame someone for not having the strength to keep that up. Especially if it causes friction with your coworkers who you have to interact with every day.
You’re not a coward, that comment is horrible advice.
It’s good for “oh I oughtta…!” online, but in real life there are significantly more professional/adult ways of solving the problem than asking semi-rhetorical questions that barely make sense in the hopes of guiding someone toward the desired outcome. Please don’t actually do that.
Asking “what does the employee handbook say about X??” isn’t a “gotcha.” You can literally go look, then tell us.
It’s ok to ask not to be recorded in a small meeting. You don’t need to bring up your unfamiliarity with the employee handbook.
I love asking the “how do you know” all day, but our official IT people have been bitten by outlook and cloud and LLMs so badly that they completely overlook the CLOUD ACT risks and general sovereignty issues inherent with using those from outside America.
So the “has this been approved” part is not gonna go like I’d like.
They make you attend the meeting, but if you’re like me you’ll be messaging your boss and saying "I’m not okay with being recorded, so I’ll just mute and shutter for the duration, thanks. I think that’s the best we can do.
I’m lucky that
we’re union
we have really strong provisions around recording
my boss is awesome
…so we can refuse to interact while being recorded, without fear of reprisal.
I was in a physical meeting where the other part cracked open their Windows laptop so we could go over documents together. Halfway in I noticed the microphone icon was on in the system bar.
Considering Microsoft and the state of Windows, I’m guessing the entire conversation is liable to be used as training data, and I would really have liked the option to nope the hell out in advance.
I just had a Teams meeting where a business partner added their AI assistant to the call and said that it would record audio/video for training purposes.
They didn’t ask for permission or anything, just joined and turned it on. Like wtf? Where does it store the data? What is it used for?
If I wasn’t forced to attend I would have left then and there.
You say, “what’s the privacy policy for your AI assistant?” and then keep asking questions like that until the person running the call gets annoyed that this has taken over their agenda and they’ll ban people from using unapproved AI agents on calls.
“Where is the data stored?” “Has this tool been approved by IT?” “Did you get consent from everyone to be recorded?” “Does the employee handbook say you can record other employees?” “Is my voice going to be used by an AI company to train a model?” etc.
Call me a coward but I can’t blame someone for not having the strength to keep that up. Especially if it causes friction with your coworkers who you have to interact with every day.
You’re not a coward, that comment is horrible advice.
It’s good for “oh I oughtta…!” online, but in real life there are significantly more professional/adult ways of solving the problem than asking semi-rhetorical questions that barely make sense in the hopes of guiding someone toward the desired outcome. Please don’t actually do that.
Asking “what does the employee handbook say about X??” isn’t a “gotcha.” You can literally go look, then tell us.
It’s ok to ask not to be recorded in a small meeting. You don’t need to bring up your unfamiliarity with the employee handbook.
I love asking the “how do you know” all day, but our official IT people have been bitten by outlook and cloud and LLMs so badly that they completely overlook the CLOUD ACT risks and general sovereignty issues inherent with using those from outside America.
So the “has this been approved” part is not gonna go like I’d like.
They make you attend the meeting, but if you’re like me you’ll be messaging your boss and saying "I’m not okay with being recorded, so I’ll just mute and shutter for the duration, thanks. I think that’s the best we can do.
I’m lucky that
…so we can refuse to interact while being recorded, without fear of reprisal.
I was in a physical meeting where the other part cracked open their Windows laptop so we could go over documents together. Halfway in I noticed the microphone icon was on in the system bar.
Considering Microsoft and the state of Windows, I’m guessing the entire conversation is liable to be used as training data, and I would really have liked the option to nope the hell out in advance.