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I wonder how corporations are going to adapt to a world where more and more meetings are transcribed and summarized by language models. Adopting that technology

I wonder how corporations are going to adapt to a world where more and more meetings are transcribed and summarized by language models. Adopting that technology, while it's a productivity boost, will expose companies to vastly greater amounts of liability. There are a lot of comments that can get made off-hand in a meeting that would never make it into chat, let alone an email.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
Just do what my company does, and delete all Teams chats in 24 hours! So secure! So protective! So useful, when you need to refer to what was told you last week, before you understood you needed it.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  Uh did you read the article cause it addresses that idea.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  indeed, the notion of "on the record" was introduced because a lot of genuinely useful non-sensitive info was conveyed in chat, and people needed to save it.
- sgent 4y ago
  This court held that once any employee is under a litigation hold then the transcripts need to be retained indefinitely.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    The company can just delete them anyway, per their policy. What's the court going to do about it? Jail someone? When has a court ever jailed someone in a big corporation for contempt of court?
    - sgent 4y ago
      The court can find the company (Google) liable, or direct the Jury to consider any hidden evidence would be adverse to Google. If Google loses a (civil) antitrust case to 38 attorney generals it will cost them 100's of billions. https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_37 https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_37 (A) For Not Obeying a Discovery Order. If a party or a party's officer, director, or managing agent—or a witness designated under Rule 30(b)(6) or 31(a)(4)—fails to obey an order to provide or permit discovery, including an order under Rule 26(f), 35, or 37(a), the court where the action is pending may issue further just orders. They may include the following: (i) directing that the matters embraced in the order or other designated facts be taken as established for purposes of the action, as the prevailing party claims; (ii) prohibiting the disobedient party from supporting or opposing designated claims or defenses, or from introducing designated matters in evidence; (iii) striking pleadings in whole or in part; (iv) staying further proceedings until the order is obeyed; (v) dismissing the action or proceeding in whole or in part; (vi) rendering a default judgment against the disobedient party; or (vii) treating as contempt of court the failure to obey any order except an order to submit to a physical or mental examination.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        I'll believe it when I see it. So far, all I ever see are fines that may seem like a lot to individuals, but for these companies can be considered "the cost of doing business". And I certainly never see company executives behind bars for things that would certainly result in prison time for normal people.
      - infamouscow 4y ago
        Just because something can happen doesn't have any relation to what's probable or likely. The question is when has a court ever jailed the officer of a big corporation for contempt of court.
euroderf 4y ago
If you ask your LLM for legal advice - based strictly on a reading of what it was trained with - will this be considered privileged communications ?
- mcv 4y ago
  Maybe if it passed the bar exam?
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  No. You can ask me for legal advice, but since I haven't been admitted to the bar, it will not be privileged. (In any case, I'd refuse to answer, since that would be "practicing law without a license.")
revelio 4y ago
If you read the judgement, the judge doesn't really see any distinction between "can technically record" and "must record", with only financial burdens being accepted as a justification for not doing so. The reasoning goes, because Chat could be recorded, it should have been because it's electronic communication. But this logic can extend to any form of communication that could technically be recorded. It means that, by extension, all video calls and phone calls should be recorded too if you can afford to do so (but it's cheap, so you can). And that in turn means that the cost of remote work just exploded because many meetings that a non-remote company would have in an office, face to face, should now be recorded and preserved if any of the participants are under a litigation hold. But as the employees testified, at a big company like Google basically in a given discussion at least someone is always under litigation hold. So that means every meeting or phone call may have to be recorded. And that in turn means the discovery cost imposed on companies that allow remote work will be much higher. Did companies just get a justification for forcing everyone back to the office? It does seem so. Maybe even for reducing the international presence of teams even when they're in the office. The judge doesn't spell out this small extension of his argument. It seems he was mostly pissed off by Google employees obfuscating about the issue and lying to the court (no excuse for that). But having read it, where's the limit? The aspects of law they're citing talk about "electronically stored information". If not using a technical ability to record is interpreted as the same thing as destroying stored information, then the retention procedures at almost every company are going to be found in non-compliance simply because video calls, phone calls and so on are so often not being recorded.
- alach11 4y ago
  I agree with all your analysis here. This judgement has far reaching consequences. It's reminiscent of discussions around MGM using automated facial recognition to ban people from venues. Our legal framework was set up with an implicit assumption that identifying people and banning them from a business is hard to scale. As soon as you can do it en-masse for thousands of employees of a rival business, the calculus might need to change. Similarly, our legal framework around the retention of corporate communications was originally framed around only official (and relatively uncommon) communications like memos being on the record. Then email. Now chat. Soon all meetings and phone calls? Each step here is a major step-change that requires careful consideration!

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

Just do what my company does, and delete all Teams chats in 24 hours! So secure! So protective! So useful, when you need to refer to what was told you last week, before you understood you needed it.

lesuorac 4y ago
Uh did you read the article cause it addresses that idea.
AlbertCory 4y ago
indeed, the notion of "on the record" was introduced because a lot of genuinely useful non-sensitive info was conveyed in chat, and people needed to save it.
sgent 4y ago
This court held that once any employee is under a litigation hold then the transcripts need to be retained indefinitely.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The company can just delete them anyway, per their policy. What's the court going to do about it? Jail someone? When has a court ever jailed someone in a big corporation for contempt of court?
  - sgent 4y ago
    The court can find the company (Google) liable, or direct the Jury to consider any hidden evidence would be adverse to Google. If Google loses a (civil) antitrust case to 38 attorney generals it will cost them 100's of billions. https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_37 https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_37 (A) For Not Obeying a Discovery Order. If a party or a party's officer, director, or managing agent—or a witness designated under Rule 30(b)(6) or 31(a)(4)—fails to obey an order to provide or permit discovery, including an order under Rule 26(f), 35, or 37(a), the court where the action is pending may issue further just orders. They may include the following: (i) directing that the matters embraced in the order or other designated facts be taken as established for purposes of the action, as the prevailing party claims; (ii) prohibiting the disobedient party from supporting or opposing designated claims or defenses, or from introducing designated matters in evidence; (iii) striking pleadings in whole or in part; (iv) staying further proceedings until the order is obeyed; (v) dismissing the action or proceeding in whole or in part; (vi) rendering a default judgment against the disobedient party; or (vii) treating as contempt of court the failure to obey any order except an order to submit to a physical or mental examination.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      I'll believe it when I see it. So far, all I ever see are fines that may seem like a lot to individuals, but for these companies can be considered "the cost of doing business". And I certainly never see company executives behind bars for things that would certainly result in prison time for normal people.
    - infamouscow 4y ago
      Just because something can happen doesn't have any relation to what's probable or likely. The question is when has a court ever jailed the officer of a big corporation for contempt of court.

euroderf 4y ago

If you ask your LLM for legal advice - based strictly on a reading of what it was trained with - will this be considered privileged communications ?

mcv 4y ago
Maybe if it passed the bar exam?
AlbertCory 4y ago
No. You can ask me for legal advice, but since I haven't been admitted to the bar, it will not be privileged. (In any case, I'd refuse to answer, since that would be "practicing law without a license.")

revelio 4y ago

If you read the judgement, the judge doesn't really see any distinction between "can technically record" and "must record", with only financial burdens being accepted as a justification for not doing so. The reasoning goes, because Chat could be recorded, it should have been because it's electronic communication. But this logic can extend to any form of communication that could technically be recorded. It means that, by extension, all video calls and phone calls should be recorded too if you can afford to do so (but it's cheap, so you can). And that in turn means that the cost of remote work just exploded because many meetings that a non-remote company would have in an office, face to face, should now be recorded and preserved if any of the participants are under a litigation hold. But as the employees testified, at a big company like Google basically in a given discussion at least someone is always under litigation hold. So that means every meeting or phone call may have to be recorded. And that in turn means the discovery cost imposed on companies that allow remote work will be much higher. Did companies just get a justification for forcing everyone back to the office? It does seem so. Maybe even for reducing the international presence of teams even when they're in the office. The judge doesn't spell out this small extension of his argument. It seems he was mostly pissed off by Google employees obfuscating about the issue and lying to the court (no excuse for that). But having read it, where's the limit? The aspects of law they're citing talk about "electronically stored information". If not using a technical ability to record is interpreted as the same thing as destroying stored information, then the retention procedures at almost every company are going to be found in non-compliance simply because video calls, phone calls and so on are so often not being recorded.

alach11 4y ago
I agree with all your analysis here. This judgement has far reaching consequences. It's reminiscent of discussions around MGM using automated facial recognition to ban people from venues. Our legal framework was set up with an implicit assumption that identifying people and banning them from a business is hard to scale. As soon as you can do it en-masse for thousands of employees of a rival business, the calculus might need to change. Similarly, our legal framework around the retention of corporate communications was originally framed around only official (and relatively uncommon) communications like memos being on the record. Then email. Now chat. Soon all meetings and phone calls? Each step here is a major step-change that requires careful consideration!