The original note, as written at the time
This is a custom GPT that allows input from multiple users sort of like in a group chat. The AI could participate as a chat administrator or as a secretary in a meeting. It follows the conversations of the users, can answer questions directed at it and makes contributions accordingly. It can introduce games or bonding or useful activities to keep the group alive. It can even encourage group members to assist each other.
Ongoing development
A custom assistant that takes input from several users at once, like a group chat, and participates as an administrator or secretary.
It follows the conversation, answers questions directed at it, contributes when it has something, and — this is the part that matters — keeps the group alive by introducing games, bonding, or useful activity, and by encouraging members to help each other.
Every group of people working together has a secretary function, and almost always it is being done badly by whoever happens to care most. Somebody has to remember the decision, restate it, chase the person who did not reply, notice that two people are saying the same thing, and keep a record that anyone can find later.
That work is unglamorous, it is real, and it is unevenly distributed. It falls on the conscientious, which means the conscientious get less of their actual work done, which means the group is quietly taxing its best member.
A machine doing the secretary’s job is straightforwardly good, and nobody will mourn the loss of it. The record is better because a machine does not forget. The chasing is fairer because a machine does not resent it. The minutes exist because somebody did not have to stay late.
The second function is the one to be careful with. Encouraging bonding is a legitimate goal and it can turn into manufactured cheerfulness very quickly — a machine that gamifies a team can produce the exact opposite of trust, because everybody can see the machinery.
The line I would hold is this: the secretary may notice, record, remind and connect. It may not decide what the group feels, and it must never be the only one who knows what was agreed.
A good secretary is invisible. A good machine secretary should be, too.