For at least 30 years of my career as a tech researcher and consultant, if there was a meeting with a client or meetings in Washington, D.C., where I often worked on government projects, I would have to attend in person. In most cases, it meant getting on a plane to attend those meetings. Over that time, I flew close to four million miles. However, all that travel took its toll on me and impacted my health and, to some degree, my well-being.
The first level of relief for me in this area came when we started to get specialty tele-video rooms. HP was one of the first to create these.
These rooms cost as much as $100,000 each, so only big companies could afford them. However, I was introduced to them through my work with HP at the time and was able to do many televideo calls with HP staff in various parts of the world.
Today, video calls are normal thanks to Zoom and similar video services, which make it possible to attend meetings around the world with ease. The good news is that we can participate in these person-to-person video calls at will, but this also means we have to be present for them to work.
However, there are many times when it might be important to have the information from these calls without the need to attend them live.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, the nature of meetings is being transformed quietly. AI-powered agents or bots now join these sessions not to speak but to listen, transcribe, and summarize. They never interrupt, yet their presence reshapes the social dynamics in ways we’re only beginning to understand.
At their best, meeting bots offer real benefits. They free participants from note-taking, enabling deeper focus and richer conversations. In hybrid and remote environments, they serve as silent collaborators, helping ensure that everyone—especially quieter voices—gets heard and remembered.
While I have used various AI meeting bots, the one I lean on the most is Otter.AI. When it first came out, it recorded the audio and translated it into text. However, that meant I would have to read the entire recorded text to get the gist of the meeting. The newer version of Otter.AI and other meeting bots now also summarize the meeting and give you the main points or highlights of the conversation.
This updated version has allowed me to attend many meetings via a bot and not have to be present at the meeting. I get an AI summary of the meeting to stay abreast of what was discussed and get the key data shared in the meeting or presentation.
While in-person meetings are still needed occasionally, I now only travel to them for speaking engagements when absolutely necessary. I still need to attend Zoom calls, especially when I am to be involved in the discussion. However, I am finding sending my AI bot to meetings highly attractive in many scenarios, especially ones I attend in listening mode only, and it has simplified my business life significantly.
However, some issues with AI bots are coming into focus as more people use them to attend meetings. One interesting question is what the etiquette is for using AI bots in a meeting.
Historically, meetings thrived on a shared social contract rooted in trust, attention, and mutual understanding. The introduction of bots disrupts that equilibrium. That’s why some organizations, like the EU Council, have moved to exclude AI assistants from sensitive internal discussions. Whether that’s overly cautious or forward-thinking depends on the context.
The real issue isn’t whether bots belong in meetings. We haven’t yet defined the norms for how to use them responsibly. I have been in meetings recently where the host banned AI bots up front.
But as AI meeting bots continue to weave themselves into the fabric of work, companies will need to intentionally craft new codes of conduct—ones that balance productivity with privacy and automation with authenticity.
On the other hand, I expect to see AI bots attend many more meetings in the future. Even with these challenges, it gives us a new alternative way to attend a meeting, if only with our personal AI bot, and still get the information needed from a presentation, lecture, or discussion.
