In addition to shipping AI products to customers as quickly as possible, Google is also incorporating AI into its internal workplace tools and even its monthly all-hands meetings.
Google began using AI this year to process and summarize questions posed by employees during its monthly town hall meetings, known as TGIFs, or “Thank God It's Friday.” The tool can soften tough questions or remove some elements, helping leaders avoid asking tougher questions in public forums, according to several employees whose identities were confirmed by Business Insider, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
For years, Googlers have been able to submit questions through an internal system called “Dolly.” Staff could also “upvote” questions on the list, with CEO Sundar Pichai or other executives typically answering the questions that received the most votes.
In April, Google rolled out a new tool called “Ask” that aggregates similar questions and summarizes them in a more polite way that often leaves out employees' sharp and direct comments.
Googlers can still click on the AI summary to see the individual questions summarized, but staff can only vote on the AI summary, one employee said.
“They're just trying to avoid harmful context or questions being seen by a wider audience and avoid getting into the specifics of what was asked in a particular question,” another employee said.
Another Googler said TGIF has become “less fun” since its introduction.
“Googlers don't like the AI because they feel it takes away the rawness and directness of the questions,” the person said. “The AI phrases its questions very politely, whereas Googlers don't shy away from sarcasm and directness.”
A Google spokesperson said the new tool was introduced in response to feedback from employees who wanted leaders to answer more questions on a broader range of topics during all-hands meetings.
Google's TGIF meetings used to be big weekly events where leaders had candid discussions with employees about company projects and where employees could air concerns about the workplace and the company's strategy.
As Google grew, the meetings became biweekly, and then in 2019, after a series of internal protests and rising tensions between management and employees, Pichai announced that TGIF would become monthly and the conversations would be more limited in scope.
Some employees say the meetings are becoming increasingly pointless, and the new “Ask a Question” tool is another way for executives to avoid answering tough questions. Several employees told BI that they rarely attend TGIF, much less ask questions.
The data seems to bear that out: In 2023, less than 1% of Googlers asked a question in TGIF's Q&A tool, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said that since the launch of Ask, the number of Googlers asking questions or voting has doubled, and that the company is taking employee feedback into account and will continue to improve the tool.
“Honestly, how the question is phrased doesn't really matter,” one employee told BI. “For years, TGIF executives have avoided questions or given very vague answers.”
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