Nine risks caused by AI notetakers (www.careful.industries)

A new Careful Industries blog post—based on workshops and playtests for the “Careful Consequence Check” tool—maps nine organisational risks introduced by widespread use of AI notetakers (tools like Copilot, Otter.ai, Zoom and Gemini). The authors conclude these systems aren’t ready to be treated as a single source of truth: transcription errors, model hallucinations and poor handling of non-standard speech (strong accents, second-language speakers, speech disabilities) can produce incorrect or discriminatory outputs, erode trust and candid conversation, and amplify HR, legal and cyber risks as transcript volumes grow. Technically, risks scale with adoption: always-on transcription increases data collection, raises privacy/consent challenges (subject access and FOI requests), creates auditability gaps (non-reproducible hallucinations), and lengthens downstream review workloads. Recommended mitigations include explicit consent processes, retention limits with automated deletion, clarity on whether AI transcripts may be used in HR/disciplinary contexts, not relying on AI as a substitution for accurate stenography or reasonable adjustments, and reducing meeting volume by prioritising “fewer, better” sessions with agreed headline actions. The bottom line: AI notetakers can be helpful for some workflows, but organisations must pair deployment with policy, technical safeguards and ongoing monitoring to manage cultural, legal and security fallout.