In addition to delivering AI products to its customers as quickly as possible, Google is also integrating AI into its internal workplace tools – even the company’s monthly staff meetings.
Google began using artificial intelligence this year to process and summarize questions from employees at monthly town hall meetings, known as TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday). The tool often softens difficult questions and removes some elements so executives can avoid more pointed questions in an open forum, say some employees whose identities Business Insider confirmed and who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
For years, Google employees could submit questions through an internal system called “Dory.” Employees could also “upvote” questions on the list, and CEO Sundar Pichai and other executives typically addressed the questions that received the most votes.
In April, Google replaced Dory with a new tool called Ask, which groups similar questions together — often in a more polite way that omits the more pointed and direct comments some employees make.
While Google employees can still click on an AI summary and see the individual questions summarized in it, employees can only vote on the AI summaries, one employee said.
“They are just trying to hide harmful contexts and issues from a larger audience and not deal with the details of a specific issue,” said another employee.
Another Google employee said TGIF has become “significantly less interesting” since the tool was introduced.
“Googlers don’t like it because they feel it takes away the rawness or directness of the question,” this person said. “The AI phrases the questions very politely, whereas Googlers have never shied away from being snappy or direct.”
A Google spokesperson said the new tool was introduced in response to feedback from employees who wanted their managers to answer more questions on a broader range of topics during staff meetings.
Google’s TGIF meetings were once large weekly events where leaders spoke openly with the rank and file about internal projects and employees could voice concerns about the workplace or company strategy.
As Google grew, the meetings became biweekly. Then, in 2019, after a wave of corporate protests and rising tensions between leadership and employees, Pichai announced that TGIF would be a monthly event with a more limited scope of conversation.
Some employees said the meetings had become increasingly pointless, and the new “Ask” tool was another way for leaders to avoid difficult questions. Several employees told BI they rarely or never attend TGIF, let alone ask questions.
The data seems to prove this. In 2023, less than 1% of Google employees asked a question for TGIF in the company’s Q&A tool, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said that since the launch of Ask, twice as many Google employees have asked and voted on questions. He said the company is taking feedback from employees and will continue to improve the tool.
“If we’re honest, it doesn’t matter how the questions are worded,” said one of the employees who spoke to BI. “The leaders at TGIF have been dodging questions or giving very vague answers for years.”
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