THE ECONOMIST: Even Artificial Intelligence thinks our monthly team meetings are embarrassing

Here is your AI recap of the monthly sales-team meeting held at 14:00 on May 2, 2025. There were ten attendees at the meeting, and 45 questions were asked. A total of 18 action items were detected. Main themes: sales results; sales pipelines; Optimate launch; “The Accountant 2”.

Sentiment analysis suggests that group morale started high, fell steeply as the meeting progressed and rebounded at the end. Lionel was the most active contributor to the discussion, responsible for 32% of words spoken, and Hans was the least active, responsible for 3% of words spoken.

Recording started with six attendees present on the call. They discussed their plans for the weekend. Elaine is thinking of going to the cinema but says there is nothing good on. Michael said he was going to the cinema that evening to see The Accountant 2. Dan will be celebrating a family birthday, an aunt who he doesn’t see much but should see more of.

Suggested action items: Michael to report back to Elaine on The Accountant 2” Dan to call his aunt each month.

Four other attendees joined the call. Sentiment analysis showed a sudden change in body language among the original participants: three participants immediately sat up straighter and everyone stopped smiling. The score for team warmth fell by 90 per cent, the steepest drop I have yet recorded within the company.

Lionel opened the meeting and provided a summary of the results last month. Revenue was up by 10% year on year, but was still 6% behind budget. Although economic uncertainty was bound to be playing a part in underperformance, the team’s glaring weaknesses were also to blame. My gaze-tracking feature showed that Tania rolled her eyes.

Suggested action item: All members of the sales team to pull their fingers out, though I’m not sure where from.

My communication-density analysis showed that seven attendees (everyone except for Lionel, Hans and Suri) were sending messages to each other on company-issued devices from this point on. Those messages are encrypted but by correlating the times they were sent with people’s facial expressions on the call, the probability that these messages contained jokes is above 90%.

Each team member gave a short overview of the results and pipelines in their territories. I have summarised the numbers in the table. Lionel spent 17 minutes asking Melody and Dan why the VGW pitch was not making headway.

Melody switched off her camera and microphone for a minute and a half afterwards, forgetting that my settings enable me to keep observing people and that I am proficient in lip-reading. She gestured at the screen with her fist and mouthed something. Sentiment analysis showed that this was the most negative point of the meeting.

Suggested action items: Melody and Dan to contact VGW again with an additional discount. Lionel to go and do something anatomically improbable.

Two participants used my interactive features during this stage of the call. Suri asked me to compare the performance of each territory in April for each of the past five years. Melody asked me to generate an image of Lionel entering the ninth circle of hell.

Lionel discussed the coming month and highlighted the launch of the new Optimate range. He ran through its principal features and said that if they could not sell this product, then team members might as well start looking for new jobs.

Suggested action items: Attendees to send a list of warmest prospects for Optimate to Lionel by May 5. Team members to update LinkedIn profiles.

Lionel left the call after 38 minutes to go to another meeting. I immediately recorded a big surge in team warmth, as well as an even more dramatic eye-roll from Tania. Robbie used a term that I am not allowed to repeat. Michael told Elaine that for some reason he was looking forward to watching a film featuring gratuitous violence, and Elaine laughed.

Suri then asked if AI was still monitoring the meeting and Robbie used another term I cannot repeat. All the attendees abruptly left the meeting. I stopped recording but continued to observe other activities. Communication between eight of the attendees continued on the encrypted app for 33 minutes. Suri updated her LinkedIn profile.

Next steps: As well as the action items above, I suggest that the executive team review whether these recaps should be automatically shared with all meeting participants. They should also remind staff members exactly what I can and cannot do. I am incapable of achieving consciousness, but even I feel a bit embarrassed.