Google’s new AI-based system for fielding questions before all-hands meetings is giving the company’s leaders an easy way out, employees say.
Previously, through an internal tool called Dory, employees could post their own questions and vote for the ones they wanted answered at the company’s monthly “TGIF” staff meetings. Google leaders, including CEO Sundar Pichai, typically answered the questions with the most votes. Business Insider Reported.
But in April, the process was changed and several anonymous employees B The new system Only ask simple questions.
Google replaced Dory with a new AI-based system called Ask, which aggregates questions and summarizes them. Employees can see the summarized questions, but they can only endorse the AI-generated version, which company leaders then answer. These summaries often lose the sharpness of the underlying questions, Googlers said. B, They soften the questions to make them easier for executives to answer.
“They’re just trying to avoid harmful context or questions being seen by a wider audience and avoid getting into the specifics of what was asked in that particular question,” one Google employee said. B.
A Google spokesperson said: luck The new “Ask” tool doesn’t ease questions, it just summarizes some to avoid repetition and increase efficiency, the spokesperson added. Executives still get asked tough questions directly, the spokesperson added. The new tool is still in an experimental phase, and the company will consider employee feedback, the spokesperson said.
Still, another employee said the paraphrased questions compiled by Ask have made the once-lively TGIF meetings less fun. Some employees said the meetings have become increasingly pointless, with several saying they rarely attend or ask questions anymore.
TGIF staff meetings are a symbol of transparency at Google, where management and employees discuss the company’s direction openly. They previously took place once a week, but were later cut to biweekly. Eventually, in 2019, Google CEO Pichai said that in response to employee activism, the company would cut the meetings to once a month and focus on “product and business strategy.”
The new AI-based questioning system for all-hands meetings was developed in part because employees wanted to answer more questions on a wider range of topics more efficiently, according to a Google spokesperson. Before Questions was introduced in 2023, fewer than 1% of Googlers asked questions during TGIF meetings, the spokesperson said. Since Questions was introduced earlier this year, the number of employees posting and voting on questions has doubled, the spokesperson added.
Despite the changes to the TGIF meeting, one employee said: B The wording of the question posed to company leaders doesn’t really matter one way or the other.
“For years, TGIF executives have avoided questions or given very vague answers,” the employee said.
The new special issue features a Wall Street legend getting a dramatic makeover, tales of cryptocurrency shenanigans and badly behaved poultry royalty, and more.
Read the story.
