# Leveraging AI Transcripts for Organizational Memory

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-10-06

## Transcript

Hi folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Wille and Teresa Kortz.
And we're so happy you're here.
Petra, I want to explore this topic of we now live in an era where almost every conversation is recorded and what impact that has on relationships, people.
Just what does it change for the better or for the worse?
It's such a tough question.
And just for clarification, conversations recorded in our tech bubble, I'd say.
But yeah.
Yeah, this idea that like AI is transcribing everything.
Yeah, every meeting.
People have a note taker in every meeting they attend.
Yeah.
Some people wear devices and record every conversation with their family members.
Hello, Meta Glasses.
How much I hate you.
Which I find a little creepy.
Super creepy.
We hate them.
I hope they will ban them over here at some point.
Yeah, I just recently had a personal experience for the first time where I was like, oh, this is an interesting experience.
How will that change team dynamics and meeting dynamics and collaboration and communication?
Because I was just on a call with a colleague and we were discussing something that my brain immediately said, like, how we talked about that.
a few weeks ago and I think that was my take back then and then he said like oh let me look it up I have the meeting transcribed and he said like no you actually had a slightly different opinion back then and that felt so weird because I aka my brain was very very sure that my take was the take that I shared with him and then hearing that in the transcript it says something slightly different.
So it was not massively different.
It was still along the same lines.
The arguments still hold, but there was nuances to it.
And it really made me wonder of, okay, what will that change in our human collaboration in the future?
A, if we not only for politicians can fact check everything everybody said all the time.
So what will that change?
And isn't it something that is truly human and actually really beautiful that our brains make this smaller adaptations of an argument?
Because maybe we have learned something new in the meantime, or we've read another article in the meantime that has slightly changed our opinion.
So should we be held accountable for the things that we said in the past?
Yeah, I find it super tricky to think about these things.
And I think that's cool that we're bringing it up and explore it a bit because it's such a brand new experience, at least for me.
What do you think, Teresa?
Yeah, you know what?
I've been using this in a way that I think is helping me see some of my own blind spots and see that I remember things wrong.
So I often have this feeling that I've told somebody something and I'm frustrated that they're not doing that thing.
Right?
So like, I'll be like, I swear we've talked about this before.
Why are we revisiting it?
And because I use granola now for all my like one-on-ones, when I have that feeling, I force myself to go back and look at the transcripts.
And more often than not, we didn't talk about it before.
And that's a little bit scary to me.
I'm like, holy crap, I'm getting frustrated with people.
And it's not, it's me.
Like I'm the problem.
This has been really enlightening.
It's really helping me see that my perception of reality is not the same as reality.
And we know this.
Humans have known this forever, right?
But now I viscerally experience it every day.
And it's been really positive because now I notice it in other areas.
I'm going to tell you a silly story.
My husband was wearing a Tab Benoit t-shirt that he bought at a concert recently.
And I was looking at it and I was like, do you have two Tad Benoit t-shirts?
And he's like, no, I only have one.
And I was like, I have a visual in my head of your Tad Benoit t-shirt and it's not the one you're wearing right now.
And we like talked about- Because your memory was just not accurate.
Yeah.
And we talked about like other t-shirts he has and like, was I confusing it with other shirts?
No, my brain just made up a whole new t-shirt that does not exist in the world.
And I was adamant.
Like I was so convinced my memory was right.
And so like- But on the other hand, it was a beautiful, conversation maybe with the husband yeah i mean at first it was not but eventually it was um i i actually think it's kind of cool like to use it this way to like yeah but you use it on yourself now in my case somebody else has used it on me yeah which is a different story.
It's a different story because I didn't ask for it and it felt slightly, it was not a big issue.
We're still friends, but it definitely for a split second, it was like, whoa, okay, this feels weird.
Is that something that I can lean into?
Or so how does it make me actually feel?
So that's one thing.
And then both you and I have this experience and we talked about it on this podcast that AI is quoting us wrong.
even with AI having access to all our writing.
And I'm just wondering, A, how good the transcripts are, because that is the first translation, and then it has to pull it out from its memory and interpret it again.
That's the second line of interpretation.
And will everybody fact check these statements?
I doubt it.
But then we have a conversation based on, but Petra, you claimed four weeks ago in a meeting this following thing.
And I would need to make the effort to go back and really what you do and really read the transcript.
And still we wouldn't know if the transcript is accurate enough.
I actually think you're raising a big assumption that I think is very problematic with recorded conversations, which is, should we hold people accountable to their past opinions?
Yeah.
And are we giving people permission for their opinions to evolve?
Like, who cares that that's what you said three weeks ago?
Exactly, that's what I'm saying.
Because today, this is the new Petra.
It has evolved.
It's model, I don't know, 4.6 at least.
So it has evolved.
Yeah, but this is...
So that is the philosophical question.
And then how much do we trust the LLMs with transcribing our conversations, with retrieving information from their transcripts?
That's another thing.
Okay, so I will say I really love it as a tool when I look at it at myself.
Yeah.
Like I believe I said something and I can go back and test that and learn that I didn't actually say something and I should stop being annoyed with other people.
I think that's a great use case.
Stop to be annoyed with other people is always a good thing.
Yeah.
I think if I was in your situation and somebody was saying, had said you said something different.
Some people do this with my writing.
They'll be like, hey, you wrote this 10 years ago and you wrote this three years ago and they're inconsistent.
Yeah.
Seven years passed between those two articles.
Like, I hope you keep learning as well.
So I had done so many times already as well.
Yeah.
I love it.
So I do think this is going to push the boundaries on like, I don't think it's a fair assumption to assume somebody's view on something isn't going to evolve.
Yeah.
We need to grant each other the right of evolved opinions.
I mean, I would hope we do that, right?
Like all of our opinions should be evolving at all times.
Yeah.
And then I think you're, you are raising another point, which is.
My guess is that person was looking at like granola notes and maybe not even the transcript.
And like, maybe we shouldn't always assume that the notes are correct.
Yes, exactly.
But I think there's a bigger question.
Like, why does it matter what you might have said three weeks ago?
Doesn't it matter more what you think now?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So that's actually how we dealt with it.
We dove into my reasoning.
So it was basically, he did a bit of a...
okay, but why did your opinion change two millimeters?
Because that's what we're talking about.
It was really like a very, very tiny bit of opinion change here.
And that was actually an interesting experiment because then we were like, and I was like, huh, okay, why did I change my opinion?
And it was a helpful framing.
So even if I didn't like the sensation in the first place for the split second, it then was an interesting and fruitful conversation about that.
And maybe that's the thing, as long as we don't see it like, hey, but you said that four weeks ago, you cannot change your opinion.
This is what we actually want to hold you accountable with still today.
As long as it's not that, it's maybe more of what you say.
It helps you explore.
blind spots and learn something more about yourself.
Maybe we can learn something about how opinions emerge.
And not just that.
Like, I think if I think about it from a collaboration standpoint, I have a theory based on my own experience with this.
I think that like, we have this internal mental narrative in our head.
We're always thinking, right?
And I think our brains are not very good at distinguishing what happened inside our head and what we said out loud.
And so when we think we told somebody something, it's because we thought we were going to tell them something.
It doesn't mean we did tell them something.
Right.
And so like maybe this helps us become a little bit more aware that what's happening in our head isn't visible to other people.
And what we think we make visible to other people isn't always the whole sum of what we make visible to other people.
If we give people permission to change their mind.
Yes, that's the important precondition.
Right.
If we acknowledge that these records may not be 100% accurate, but it inspires these conversations of like, it becomes safe for somebody to say, didn't we talk about this last week?
Can we look at the record?
And then what were our opinions back then?
And what have we learned since?
And then where do we stand today?
Like if it's changed, let's talk about why and let's make sure we have a shared experience about what changed that evolved our team perspective.
Yes.
I love that framing.
Yeah, like we can do it at the individual level, but like maybe it's also a really cool collaboration tool.
Yeah, maybe.
I like that framing.
Yeah.
So under these circumstances, I'm now convinced that people should use it more in that way.
But...
I also think it can be weaponized.
Like you said this on this date, why are you changing your mind?
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, of course.
And it's maybe, so if people are using it, maybe use it on yourself first, see how it feels before you actually use it on others and your team.
First experience how much your memory does not represent reality.
Yeah.
Which by the way, is very disturbing.
I still.
It is very disturbing.
I still cannot get out of my head the t-shirt that I am confident exists that does not exist.
I can visualize it.
I can describe the t-shirt.
It's a different color than the actual t-shirt.
The graphic is completely different.
The only thing that is the same is the tab-in-law t-shirt.
It doesn't exist in Rick's wardrobe.
It just exists in your memory.
I love you.
By the way, did you know, I just, for my email course, I wrote something about personality.
So stages of personality development in humans, right?
So that's a bit of a psychological thing.
It's called the living stages.
And there is actually one stage and I think it's one of the latest stages.
So it has eight levels and I think it's like seven or eight.
When you are as conscious about your own flaws, when it comes to.
personality stability and it comes with memory stability and the ability to accept that two people can have different things to be true at the same time.
Yeah.
Is this Chris Argyris' work?
Maybe they teamed up on that.
So it's called the living of stages and I know that she wrote papers with Chris Archer as well.
There's a lot of researchers that have like Okay, so I think where this is rooted is like in psychology, we have child development stages that are very stable.
And there's a lot of psychologists that are trying to identify are there adult development stages.
And I believe like the root of it started with Chris Argyris' action science.
Yeah, I know that they were papers together.
And then there's a bunch of researchers that have like gone their own direction on what are those development stages.
Who's the person that...
that model you're using?
Do you remember?
Let me look it up.
Let me ask Claude.
Yeah, okay.
What's fun about this is I'm not, I will share, I'm not 100% convinced that the adult stages, I'm not convinced that any of these models get it right.
And it's because they're all theoretical models still.
So the name is Jane Löfvener.
Oh, I don't know that I've heard of her.
We put it in the show notes, people.
If you want to read more about it on Wikipedia.
And I sent a link now to Teresa that you can look it up in the chat.
Perfect.
Yeah, but it's so funny that you talk about it because maybe more people will then land on something like the higher up person ego development stages because they really see their own flaws in their memory.
And therefore, it will be easier for them to collaborate with other humans.
That would be actually cool.
Okay, so I want to touch on this a little bit.
I'm not 100% convinced these adult stages are real.
But what I love about the models around them is they start to, they're like an extension of theory of mind.
So theory of mind is like when a kid realizes what's in their experience is not exactly the same as somebody else's experience.
And they start to be able to project on, like, that person might.
I love this toy.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, that kid doesn't love the toy.
And that's just a different perspective kind of thing.
I'm really butchering theory of mind.
But that's like a real basic way to start.
And I think what's common across all these adult models is it's like looking at how does theory of mind evolve?
Because I think humans naturally have this like individual centric view of the world.
And then as we like interact with the world, we're forced to.
we're forced to like take other people's perspectives.
And there's variation in human ability to do that.
Yes, exactly.
I think the part I don't agree with necessarily is there's these, they present them as these like graduating stages.
Yeah.
And there's a little bit of this later stages are better than earlier stages.
And I think that gets, that opens a whole can of worms.
Yeah, but it's not what living as claiming for her.
It's more like nested.
So it's not that later is better, but it's, you cannot go to seven until you went through all the other ones because there is kind of a, there are learnings and realizations in your ego development without them.
You don't come to the next stage basically.
Yeah.
I like thinking about it more as like you're filling your toolbox.
And there's different tools that are helpful in different contexts.
So like in some of these models, I would argue the earlier stages tools can be more appropriate in some situations than the later stage tools.
I'm not sure if I go with that because it has, for me, it has nothing to do with toolbox.
It has more to do with life experiences that force you into certain ability and flexibility.
neurologically to think about certain concepts.
Yeah, I would call that a tool though.
Maybe we should do an episode on these models.
We should maybe do an episode on these models.
I love it.
A very philosophical conversation at the end, folks.
Yeah, for sure.
All right, anyway.
Thanks for hanging out with us.
Yeah, I'm going to wrap up with everybody.
We are at a point where everybody is recording all of their conversations.
Maybe think about how that impacts your relationships, both positively and maybe negatively.
I love your wrap up.
Thank you, Teresa.
Thanks, Petra.