Item — HN Reader

> How fucking creepy is that?! How fucking awkward is that? And before you start talking with whoever you're catching up with, you ask "You don't mind, do you?"

In living memory, I had a HUMAN notetaker in important meetings. After secretaries left the world went to hell and topic experts and engineers were expected to have social graces, everything got worse. We invented new religions like agile to make up for a good old organized secretary.

So - no I won't apologize. My memory is that of a catfish. I see a moving object and i head towards it. Note takers are invaluable, human or not. And AI or NOT voice to text is NOT new.

Lastly, it's worked out to keep everyone honest. I work with clients, we have calls, they're long. I just had a client pull ME up in an old recording agreeing to do something after I said 'no thats out of scope'. So its nice to see some accountability.

5 comments

This particular article concerns an AI notetaker being used in the context of healthcare - there is a well founded reason that health information is so stringently controlled which is to enable patient comfort at sharing potentially embarrassing or uncomfortable details. If you're receiving PT there is a large potential to feel shame over an inability to do things that were previously trivial[1].

Once upon a time the notes may have been recorded by a staff member of the doctor's office or by the doctor themselves (usually after the meeting). Budgetary constraints push HCPs towards cutting staff and those rolls are being replaced by AI and that is not okay.

Staff, Nurses, Doctors are all under the clear guidance of HIPAA and understand their responsibility towards patient privacy - it isn't a perfect system and there are notable disclosures and violations that have happened in the past but once third party systems are involved - especially non-deterministic third party systems - then the client's understanding of privacy may be severely compromised.

I love voice to speech and meeting summarization for thinking sessions with coworkers where maybe someone is motivated to take notes (and better participates through that action) but the emphasis is on everyone being present and being able to talk freely. The doctor's office is a fundamentally different environment, though. 1. Aside - an unnecessary shame - no one should feel guilt over trying to overcome a disability.

There's no reason an AI notetaker couldn't be certified to handle HIPAA and PII data.

You absolutely could build such a tool and I have seen HIPAA authorized model sandboxes that do definitely exist. However, most off the shelf note-takers would not so qualify and it's a minefield to build one with out of domain third party resources.

I think it's fair to say the non-technical public has been repeatedly burned by AI companies selling something different from what they're advertising and it's fair to be skeptical as a layperson about your ability to tell a properly HIPAA compliant tool from a non-HIPAA compliant tool.

They are, and already exist.

Yes and I bet my doctors would LOVE to be able to "roll the tape back" when the client said "no they arent taking any medication"

It has occurred to me over and over for the last several years that many of the senior engineers at my company would be substantially more productive with some sort of assistance from someone who specializes in having executive function skills. One such person given four or five engineers to manage could do wonders. And they'd also be the best source of feedback for hard-to-measure performance evaluation information like "is this senior engineer actually working on anything most days?" But executive assistants are a privilege reserved for only the people who are at level X and up.

I strongly disagree that agile was invented to make up for the absence of secretaries. Agile was invented to make up for the absence of omniscience (and absence of the recognition of non-omniscience). Secretaries weren't going to make that work.

Well, yes, but the article is not about those important meetings.

The examples there are literally meeting friends over coffee and attending a health-care professional.

somehow my paltry and boring CRUD business specifics seem a lot less important than recording a doctors recommendations as to how to treat my wounds.

I have a son and we have to sometimes split appointments across me and my wife. I wish i had a recording or automated AI notes that came to my email (no not to a captive portal I can lose access to) so i can read what my doctor said about my son without it getting filtered through my wifes memory.

If you want to record your interactions of health professionals and share them with the world, you are free to do that.

That's not the example on the article.

But the quoted example and your counterexample are very different cases! It can be creepy to use an AI note taker when "catching up" and totally a good idea for hour-long client calls.