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- Google introduced a new AI tool that combines and summarizes employee questions in its town halls.
- Some staff say it's censoring tough questions by making them less pointed.
- A Google spokesperson said the new tool was rolled out in response to feedback from employees.
Google isn't just shipping AI products to customers as fast as it can; it's also building AI into its internal workplace tools — even its monthly company all-hands meetings.
Google has started using AI this year to process and summarize questions asked by staff at its monthly town halls, known as TGIF (Thank God It's Friday). The tool often softens tough questions and removes some elements, letting leaders avoid more pointed questions in an open forum, according to some employees, whose identities Business Insider confirmed and who asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to talk to the press.
For years, Googlers could submit questions through an internal system known as "Dory." Staff could also "upvote" questions in the list, and CEO Sundar Pichai and other executives would usually address the ones that received the most votes.
In April, Google replaced Dory with a new tool called "Ask" that consolidates similar questions together and summarizes them – often in a more polite way that omits some employees' pointed and more direct comments.
Googlers can still click on an AI summary and see the individual questions that it summarized, but staff can only vote on the AI summaries, one employee said.
"They're just trying to dodge damaging context and questions from being seen by a larger audience and avoid engaging with any specifics asked in one particular question," said another employee.
Another Googler said TGIF had become "much less interesting" since the tool's introduction.
"Googlers don't love it because they feel it removes the raw or direct element of the question," that person said. "The AI words the questions very politely whereas Googlers were never shy about being snarky or direct."
A Google spokesperson said the new tool was rolled out in response to feedback from employees who wanted leaders to address more questions across a broader range of topics during all-hands meetings.
Google's TGIF meetings were once a weekly blow-out event where leaders spoke frankly with rank and file about internal projects, and staffers could raise concerns about the workplace or the company strategy.
As Google swelled in size, the meetings became every other week. Then, in 2019, after a bout of company protests and increased tensions between leadership and employees, Pichai announced TGIF would be a monthly affair and more limited in the scope of the conversation.
Some employees said the meetings have become increasingly pointless, and the new "Ask" tool is another way to let executives avoid answering difficult questions. Several staffers told BI that they rarely, if ever attend TGIF, let alone ask questions.
The data seems to prove that. In 2023, fewer than 1% of Googlers asked a question in the company's Q&A tool for TGIF, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said that since the introduction of "Ask," twice as many Googlers have asked and voted on questions. They said the company was taking feedback from employees and would continue to iterate on the tool.
"If we're being honest, the way the questions are worded doesn't matter," one of the employees who spoke to BI said. "Execs have been dodging questions or giving very vague answers at TGIF for years now."
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