Hello!welcome home About Technology: AIa pop-up newsletter about artificial intelligence, how it works, and how to use it.
Last week, we showed you how to use creative AI tools to generate and edit amazing images. Now let’s move on to automating the time-consuming and sometimes boring parts of many office tasks.
Yes, we are talking about meetings. Learn how to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to expedite tasks such as preparing presentations, writing key points, and taking meeting minutes.
A common sense warning before you start: Anything you do using an online service can be seen by the company that operates it, whether it’s a big technology company or an AI startup. So if your meeting covers sensitive topics such as trade secrets or HR issues, it may not be the best time to try out these new tools.
How to generate a slide deck
website gamma automatically generates detailed and colorful slide decks with graphics, charts and text. You’ll probably need to adjust the text or add your own photos. But think of this generator as a powerful presentation template that automates tedious tasks. Then you can work on more detailed work.
First sign up for a free account, click “Presentation” and fill in the prompts. As with text and image generators, the more detailed your prompts, the better.
Below is an example I used to illustrate a hypothetical presentation.
The latest information on staffing for tech start-ups. Announcing new hires including Director of Diversity, Head of Human Resources and his seven new Software Engineers. Currently, he has 120 employees and wants to expand to 150 by 2024. In the future, we plan to hire a Business Development Officer and expand our sales staff.
Gamma prompts you with an overview of slides and template options in different color schemes.
Using my prompts, Gamma created a seven-slide presentation. Gamma included a panel outlining the roles of the new Director of Diversity and Head of Human Resources.
Below are snippets of two slides created by Gamma.
The final step is to edit your presentation. In my example, I’ll add the new employee’s name, biography, and headshot.
WARNING: Generative AI systems are vulnerable to a phenomenon called “hallucinations” where models make up plausible-sounding nonsense. Especially in the workplace, it is extremely important to triple check that no inaccuracies are introduced.
I tested another site similar to Gamma that creates beautiful slides, but it also created fictional employees combined with photos of real people scraped from the internet. not good!
talking point
In preparation for a virtual meeting to discuss staff updates, I start by telling chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing: Select “For a presentation about…” and paste in the previous prompt you used to create your slide deck.
(Remember that “act as if…” is one of the key prompts for using generative AI)
The chatbot then generates a list of talking points and some suggested remarks to accompany each slide. Again, some editing may be required.
Summary of meeting minutes
Suppose you want to quickly jot down notes summarizing what was discussed in a meeting. Zoom and Google include tools that use AI to automatically transcribe meeting audio into text files, as long as the meeting is recorded with everyone’s permission. You can then paste the transcript into your chatbot and ask it to be summarized. (Don’t do this for confidential information.)
If you’re using Google Meet with a business license, meeting recording is turned on by default and a link to a Google doc is emailed to the host. (you can also follow Google’s efforts Activate the transcription feature. )
If you’re using Zoom, you’ll need a Business, Education, or Enterprise license. Cloud recording enabled in your account settings. Enable cloud recording when the Zoom meeting starts. After the meeting ends, the service will automatically generate a transcript.
From there, go to the chatbot and say, “Act like you’re my executive assistant. You’re using this recording to compile meeting minutes.” Paste the part you want to summarize, and the chatbot will automatically convert it to the minutes format. (If the transcript is too long, you can paste it in multiple parts and tell the chatbot what to say when you’re done pasting.)
If the meeting isn’t recorded, but someone is taking notes, you can paste the notes along with the same prompts into the chatbot to format the document into meeting notes.
what’s next?
Next week, we’ll discuss how to use AI for consumption. Think about vacation planning and shopping.
