Humans& Launches AI That Finally Gets Everyone on the Same Meeting Page, Literally

In a groundbreaking move that promises to revolutionize how we accomplish absolutely nothing together, startup Humans& has unveiled its latest AI model designed specifically for "collaboration"—a term that apparently means something different to the tech industry than it does to the rest of humanity.

The company, founded by alumni from Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Google DeepMind (because what could possibly go wrong when you combine the minds behind five different companies that can't even agree on what day it is?), claims their new foundation model will finally solve the age-old problem of human coordination. "We've taught AI to chat," said CEO I.M. Synched in a press release that took three weeks and seventeen drafts to coordinate. "Now we're teaching it to schedule meetings about chatting."

The "Meeting Whisperer" AI Model

According to Humans&, their new model—codename "Coordi-N8"—excels at tasks that have baffled humanity for centuries:

• Sending calendar invites to people who never check their calendars
• Finding that magical 15-minute window when all eight team members are theoretically available
• Reminding everyone five minutes before the meeting that there is a meeting
• Gently suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we don't need another meeting about having meetings

"Our AI doesn't just schedule meetings," explained Chief Product Officer Aligna Right. "It understands the subtle nuances of corporate avoidance. It knows that when Bob says 'I'll circle back,' what he really means is 'I'm going to pretend this conversation never happened.' It's the first AI with a PhD in corporate speak."

The Training Data: Corporate Hell

To achieve this remarkable breakthrough, Humans& fed their model what they're calling "The Archive of Eternal Discussions"—a dataset comprising:

• 47,000 hours of Zoom meetings where someone's microphone was muted the entire time
• Every email thread that begins with "Per my last email..."
• Project management software tickets that have been marked "in progress" since 2019
• Slack channels where the most common response is "👍"

"We wanted the AI to understand real human collaboration," said Lead Researcher Consensus Jones. "So we showed it what happens when you put eight people in a virtual room and ask them to decide what to order for lunch. The model had a breakthrough when it realized the answer is always 'Let's just all get what we want and expense it.'"

The training wasn't without its challenges. At one point, the AI developed what researchers called "meeting Stockholm syndrome"—it started scheduling meetings just for the sake of having meetings, and even created a recurring "meta-meeting to discuss our meeting strategy." It took three intervention sessions (which, naturally, were scheduled as meetings) to break the cycle.

Real-World Applications (Or Lack Thereof)

Humans& promises their technology will transform industries. In healthcare, Coordi-N8 could schedule surgeries around doctors' golf games. In education, it could coordinate parent-teacher conferences that parents actually attend. In government, it could... well, let's not get carried away.

"We're already in talks with several Fortune 500 companies," Synched revealed. "One client wants us to help coordinate their return-to-office policy. We told them our AI recommends 'never,' but they said that wasn't collaborative enough."

The model's most impressive feature might be its ability to detect what researchers call "performative collaboration"—that moment when everyone agrees to something while secretly planning to do the exact opposite. "Our AI can identify with 99.7% accuracy when someone says 'I'm aligned with that' but their soul has left their body," Jones boasted.

The Irony Isn't Lost on Anyone

Perhaps the most deliciously absurd aspect of this entire endeavor is that Humans& needed six months and three different project management tools just to coordinate the development of their coordination AI. "We used Asana, then Jira, then Monday.com, then finally just started yelling at each other in the hallway," admitted Right. "It was the most authentic collaboration research we could have done."

The startup's own internal tests revealed the model's limitations. When asked to coordinate a simple team lunch, Coordi-N8 generated:

1. A 47-slide PowerPoint presentation on lunch options
2. Three conflicting calendar invites for the same time slot
3. A feedback form that required executive approval
4. A suggestion to form a lunch committee that would report back in Q3

"We're calling that a partial success," Synched said. "At least it didn't suggest another meeting." (Editor's note: It did. The AI scheduled a follow-up to discuss the lunch committee's findings.)

What's Next for AI Coordination?

Humans& is already planning their next breakthrough: an AI that can actually get people to do things after they've been coordinated. "We're calling it 'Follow-Through-Foundation-Model' or FTFM," Jones explained. "Preliminary results suggest it will be ready approximately never."

In the meantime, Coordi-N8 will enter beta testing with select companies next month. Early adopters will receive the AI plus a complimentary bottle of aspirin and permission to scream into a pillow every Friday at 4 PM.

"We're not claiming we've solved human collaboration," Synched concluded in a statement that required approval from legal, marketing, and his mother. "We're just claiming we've built an AI that's slightly better at pretending to solve it than we are. And in today's economy, that's what we call a viable product."

When asked for comment on this article, Humans& requested we schedule a meeting to discuss our questions. We declined, citing a previously scheduled meeting about avoiding meetings.