This Meeting is Being Recorded

Dear Erin,

You are a super thoughtful, measured person who considers words carefully before you share them. I am not.

With a learning and working style that is direct, inquisitive, and almost aggressively in pursuit of understanding, I am actively engaged. Wait - that is not to say I am more or less engaged than someone who is an active listener. What I mean to say is that in an effort to understand by asking questions, I am much more likely to share what I am thinking. You’ll know where I stand and what I am after, most likely, because of my line of questioning.

I’m starting to wish I was more like you.

We are entering an age in which everything we say in a meeting could be recorded. More than recorded - transcribed, summarized, and publicized. I hadn’t given it much thought until recently. I seems like since the Covid rise of Zoom, “this meeting is being recorded” is just part of professional life. I hadn’t really thought about it.

The original intent is innocuous enough. During the pandemic, we all were on Zoom or Google Meets or whatever, working odd schedules, and the nifty trick of recording the meetings was a boon to those who could not be there live. The recording was available for those wanting to watch it later. This has been really helpful for webinars - especially the big ones. The likelihood of me asking a question in a big online gathering is so slim that it made watching a recording pretty much the same experience as watching it live.

But here’s the thing. I hadn’t given much thought to AI’s ability to change the game. It’s possible that there is more than a video recording of the meeting. There could be a word for word transcription. Or an AI-crafted summary, which may or may not have been reviewed and edited by a human. And, that transcription or summary is now data, feeding the insatiable large language model (LLM) that powers generative AI.

Am I okay with that? I don’t know. Maybe. But I have to think about it. More importantly, I have to think about what I say….before it gets recorded and added to the global data set that is the internet.

As you know, I am NOT a lawyer. But a quick Google search about the legality of recording meetings suggests that it is ILLEGAL in ten states to record a conversation without getting informed consent from both parties before staring the recording. Guess which of our two favorite states are in that ten? Yup, Illinois and California.

I read that to mean that broadcasting “this meeting is being recorded” is NOT the same as obtaining consent. So we really shouldn’t be doing that as hosts. Instead, there is a Zoom feature that changes the pop-up to say “This meeting is being recorded…By staying in this meeting, you consent to being recorded.” And then you as a participant need to click on “Got it” (consent) or “Leave Meeting.”

The feature isn’t widely promoted, I suppose, because 40 states are just fine with “one party consent” meaning that you do not need all parties’ consent before recording; one is enough whether that is the host or a participant. It’s good manners to tell the rest of us you are recording it, but you don’t legally have to tell us.

Okay, so that’s Zoom - what I think of as a webinar-style meeting platform. But what about just regular meetings? Can’t people record it? Are they doing it already without us knowing?

AI note takers are one of the most popular AI use cases right now. There are a bunch of providers, many of which will hook up with your calendar software. In the background the software will record, transcribe, summarize - whatever you ask it to do. Some exist outside the calendar software and use your computer’s audio. Many of the virtual meeting / calendar-synced products are visible to all participants of the meeting with the Zoom-like notification, though there are ways to disguise that. The notetakers that are using computer audio need not be visible to anyone. Like Alexa, they are listening in the background. Even in in-person meetings.

Not telling people they are being recorded feels unethical to me. And now we know that in CA and IL, it’s illegal. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Some of the internet chitchat I read leaned towards “get over it, you are being recorded.” Other authors were very concerned about privacy, security and confidentiality. Those with journalism backgrounds talked about recording interviews. At one time, this felt invasive; now it is part of the gig. The benefit to the person being interviewed, i.e., not being misquoted, now seems obvious.

And therein lies the rub. The person being interviewed wants to make a point, wants to share information, wants accuracy. And therefore knowingly gives consent to the recording.

I don’t know if I want every single thing I say in a meeting recorded and shared.

If someone can use a computer audio-based notetaker, and that person doesn’t realize that it is best practice and possibly the law to tell me that the meeting is being recorded, then I’m vulnerable. We could be sitting across a conference table chatting, with an open laptop recording everything I say.

Not only recording it, but possibly putting it on the internet.

And Illinois law isn’t going to help me much if that happens. Sure I can file a complaint, but the information is already out there.

You know me - I’m not saying awful things that would embarrass me. At least I hope not. But I was in a meeting a few days ago with a client’s board members and we were referencing employee salaries. In the nonprofit world of social services, we often talk about private client issues. By name! Perhaps we are talking about proprietary models and intellectual property that we don’t want shared. When I am teaching I like to give examples of what not to do - transcribing those stories can go awry without me, the speaker, as the “human in the loop” editing the final version of whatever summary the AI agent creates.

All this is to say that I had best become more like you.Thoughtful, measured, not-so-quick to say whatever is on the tip of my tongue all the time. Consider my questions before they fly out of my mouth.

Best to assume you are being recorded. Best to assume that the meeting is going to be codified through the lens, biases and filter of someone else (or someone else’s software). Best to assume that your words can become someone else’s data.

Best to assume that the most important self-protection you can employ is silence.

Love, Mom