Let’s be brutally honest: AI meeting note-taking tools are one of those technologies that sound brilliant in theory but fail spectacularly in practice. As someone who’s watched countless teams fall into this productivity trap, I’m taking a stand.
I recently posted about this on LinkedIn and got such a big reaction that I thought I would expand on my thoughts here.
So what’s so bad about using AI meeting summaries? Let me tell you:
The False Efficiency of AI Meeting Minutes
AI promises to free us from minute-taking, but it’s an absolute lie. Rather than saving time, these tools create yet another tedious task: reviewing and correcting AI-generated summaries that inevitably miss the point. This verification process takes significantly longer than simply jotting down key points yourself.
The AI simply doesn’t understand context or team dynamics. It can’t distinguish between a throwaway comment and a crucial decision. Only you – with your understanding of the business, the people, and the objectives – can capture what truly matters.
Vicki put it perfectly in response to my original post: “None of them are any good anyway.” Exactly. The technology simply isn’t there yet, despite what the glossy marketing materials promise.
The Trust Destroyer
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: recording your meetings is a trust-killer. When team members see that blinking red light, authentic communication dies instantly.
As Lachie commented, “I’ve been aware of some doing it without telling us (no doubt for good reasons), and not sure this really works out great for trust.” He’s spot on. And secretly recording? That’s not just ineffective – it’s downright unethical.
Think about it: Would you openly discuss mistakes, challenges, or controversial ideas knowing every word is being permanently documented? Of course not. You’d offer sanitised, corporate-speak versions of your thoughts. The presence of AI recording guarantees self-censorship, which is the death of innovation and problem-solving.
Meetings should be safe spaces for honest dialogue, not performances for the record.
Collective Understanding Abandoned
The act of agreeing on meeting minutes isn’t just administrative busywork – it’s a crucial alignment exercise that AI completely eliminates.
When teams collectively summarise what was discussed and decided, it ensures everyone leaves with the same understanding. This alignment process reveals miscommunications, highlights different interpretations, and creates genuine consensus about next steps. This is the principle that we used to build our meeting productivity tool Beyond, and it works.
Outsourcing this to AI means team members walk away with entirely different understandings of what was decided, leading to wasted effort, misaligned work, and inevitable frustration when expectations aren’t met. Read more about this phenomenon in this WSJ article about AI meeting transcription.
What the Beyond Community Is Saying About AI Meeting Summaries
Christina’s comment resonated strongly with me: “I detest being sent other people’s notetaker’s capturing of events… I trust myself to take the notes that I need to!” Exactly this. Your notes should reflect your understanding and priorities, not an AI’s interpretation of a conversation it barely comprehends.
Perzen offered an interesting nuance: “I’d never use the AI transcriptions as defacto minutes BUT they are really great to feed into AI and ask for key actions/next steps for everyone.” This highlights an important distinction between relying entirely on AI versus using it as a supplementary tool – more on this in a moment.
Where AI CAN Actually Help with Meetings
I’m not anti-technology – I’m anti-wasting-time. Here’s where AI genuinely can enhance meeting productivity without undermining team dynamics:
- Voice-to-text for personal dictation: Use AI to capture your own thoughts quickly after a meeting or to dictate key points for yourself during natural breaks.
- Organising existing minutes: Already have notes but they’re a mess? AI can help structure and organise information you’ve already validated.
- Strategy development assistance: Tools like our in-app strategy builder assistant Buzz can ask probing questions that facilitate deeper thinking – not replace it.
- Extracting action items from your notes: Once you’ve taken proper notes, AI can help identify and compile action items for easier follow-up.
- Meeting preparation: AI can help draft agendas or preparatory questions based on meeting objectives you’ve defined.
The key difference? In these scenarios, AI is enhancing your thinking and documentation – not replacing the human elements that make meetings valuable.
A Better Approach to Meeting Documentation
Instead of outsourcing understanding to AI, try these approaches:
- Rotate the note-taking responsibility among team members, ensuring everyone remains engaged whilst sharing the administrative burden.
- Focus relentlessly on decisions and actions, not dialogue. The only meeting notes worth having capture commitments and next steps, not exhaustive transcripts.
- End every meeting with a quick recap where all participants explicitly agree on key takeaways and commitments. This creates alignment and accountability.
- Use collaborative documents where multiple participants can contribute notes simultaneously, creating a more comprehensive and accurate record.
Stop Using AI Meeting Minutes and Start Trusting Your Human Intelligence
The most productive meetings aren’t information exchanges – they’re opportunities for creative collision, relationship strengthening, and collaborative problem-solving.
By prioritising technological convenience over human connection, AI minute-taking tools fundamentally undermine what makes bringing people together worthwhile in the first place.
Sometimes the most productive approach isn’t the most advanced, but the one that best serves human collaboration. Trust your ability to capture what matters, facilitate honest dialogue, and build team alignment through intentional communication.
What’s your take? Has AI note-taking improved your meetings, or created more problems than it solved? Share your experiences in the comments – I guarantee they’ll be more insightful than anything an AI could generate.
Want to Make Your Meetings More Effective?
Get a free demo of our all-in-one meeting, action-tracking and strategy software and discover how Beyond transforms how your team collaborates.