Meeting Agendas and Minutes: Where AI Helps and Where It Errs

Minutes are a record of decisions, and decisions are exactly where a chat tool slips. It can tidy your notes into neat paragraphs. It can't know what the meeting actually agreed.

What minutes are for

Wikipedia calls minutes the official record of a group's meetings, and says they aren't transcripts.¹ Under Robert's Rules of Order, it explains, they should mostly show what was done, not who said what.¹ Your own constitution may say more, so check it.

That helps with AI work. You don't need a tool that repeats every comment. You need one that helps you list motions, outcomes and tasks clearly.

Where AI helps

Agendas. Give the tool your list of topics and the time you have. Ask for a suggested order, with routine items first and the longer discussion in the middle. You'll often notice an item you forgot, like "apologies" or "correspondence".

Tidying notes. Paste in your typed notes, with names reduced to roles ("the chair", "the treasurer"), and ask for a minutes layout: attendance, apologies, items, decisions, actions, next meeting. The rough scribble becomes a page you can read.

Action lists. Ask for a table of tasks with who and by when. Then check each line against what you wrote down.

Where it gets things wrong

The first sign is that everything reads smoothly. Minutes need to be dull and exact, and a smooth draft hides small changes.

Watch for:

• A discussion point turned into a decision. ("Members felt the fence should be fixed" becomes "It was resolved to fix the fence".)
• A vote count or amount that doesn't match your notes.
• Someone given a task they never took on.
• A name spelled differently, or two people merged into one.
• A neat sentence about something that was never said.

The OAIC says plainly that AI tools can return wrong results.² When one states a falsehood as fact, the trade word is a hallucination.³ In minutes, a falsehood like that can end up in the official record.

What a person must still check

Sit with your original notes and check these, one line at a time:

• Who was present and who sent apologies.
• The exact wording of each motion, who moved it and who seconded it, if your group records that.
• Whether it passed, and any figures for or against.
• Money amounts, dates and deadlines.
• Each action: the task, the person, the date.
• Anything the group asked to have left out of the record.

If you recorded the meeting, don't paste a transcript without checking who agreed to being recorded. Voices and names in a recording point to real people. The Australian regulator advises keeping personal details out of public chatbots.² Before trying it, read about what stays out of a chat tool.

Closed items

Some matters never belong in a chat window. Think of a complaint about a named member, a health matter or a disciplinary item. Write those up by hand. Store them where your group's rules say.

Approval

Treat the AI draft as a working copy. Mark it "draft" until the chair or the next meeting approves it. Keep your original handwritten or typed notes until then, so anyone can compare.

The tool's general limits are set out in the overview page.