(2026-04-28) Pearson Gooch Why I Gave Up On Ai Meeting Notes

Taylor Pearson on Why I Gave Up on AI Meeting Notes.

by Dr. Benn Gooch + Venkatesh Rao’s comment

One of the most widely adopted early use cases I see for people with AI is note taking apps (AKA AI scribes). This is an account of a physician who quickly adopted them with the very reasonable view of reducing his documentation work and spending more time with his patients.

After about 18 months, he realized that writing the clinical note was important cognitive work, not merely administrative burden. Delegating it silently hollowed out the reflection and orientation components of caring for patients.

Rao’s comment reframes the same observation in systems terms: the risk of AI use is “insufficient orientation.” Reorientation is friction, but it’s important and necessary friction.

• The O_DA of OODA iterates so fast and smoothly, the O-for-orientation gets kicked out of the loop unless you explicitly rig it in.
• The dream of hands-off agentic bliss is a bit like the dream of hands-off passive income a decade ago. Both fantasies.

This risks romanticizing friction and I think the optimal amount of AI note taking usage is not zero. But, there is a skill in distinguishing friction doing load-bearing work from friction that’s just overhead

Broadly, I think we need to evolve something like a pattern language for working with AI effectively and note taking is a good first form factor.

Forward Deployed, Episode 4: The Special Forces Model with Chris Papasadero and Noah Brier

*The ambient assumption in a lot of AI discourse is that software (and knowledge work more broadly) is a Six-Sigma-able problem. It’s a manufacturing line that can be de-variance’d with enough process.

Brier argues making software (and, by extension, most high level knowledge work) is closer to making a movie (see Film Industry) than making a car. If that’s right, the search for “the right agent pipeline” shouldn’t look like Ford’s assembly line (stations, handoffs, QC) — it should look more like Andy Warhol’s studio (assistants producing variations, the artist giving direction, dailies as shared context).*