In this post, I’ll describe how you can use GPT4All, an AI tool running locally on your computer, to create a reasonable first draft of meeting notes from a transcript. This tool is capable of processing text versions of meetings that have been created by tools like Whisper from audio recordings. By using GPT4All, the task of taking meeting notes becomes more manageable and efficient.

You need to tweak the standard settings of GPT4All’s AI model in order to obtain a large enough context window so that your AI engine can analyze the entire transcript and not just the last portion of it.

One-time Setup

1. Install GPT4All, as outlined in an earlier blog post.
2. Start GPT4All.
3. Install the „Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 128k“ model: Models -> + Add Model -> search for „Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 128k“ -> Download
4. Increase the context window:
   1. Chats -> load the „Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 128k“ model
   2. Settings -> Model -> Context Length: increase from default 2048 to 16384 (at least three times the number of words in your transcript; 8192 was not enough for a 3600 word transcript).
   3. Max Length: increase from 4096 to 8192 (this might not be needed if you want a short output).

Steps per Meeting Transcript

1. Start GPT4All, load the „Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 128k“ model and start a new chat.
2. Copy & paste this prompt into the „Send a message“ field. At the end, do not press enter, instead press Shift+Enter twice to insert a blank line, without sending the message:
   Create a summary of the following meeting transcript. Use bullet points, include all topics, even those that were mentioned only briefly.
3. Paste your meeting transcript into the message box, after the prompt and the newline. Then hit Enter to send the request and get a cup of water/tea/coffee while you wait for the reply.
4. If the AI output has too few notes about some topics, ask follow-up questions like Please elaborate more on the conference in ... .
5. Copy the reply (output) to your word processor and review whether AI got the facts right.

Important: Review AI Output

Review whether AI got the facts right. AI tends to hallucinate and this tendency is amplified by audio transcription errors, interrupted sentences etc.

• AI might have reversed who is going to do what. For instance, when talking about an app, AI might think you are developing it, while in reality you are researching its usefulness and someone else would be doing the development.
• AI might mix up or group unrelated events, like a conference that is half a year ahead and a visit to relatives next weekend.
• In many places you’ll need to change „the speaker“ into the appropriate real name.

Conclusion

• AI can give you a good first draft of the meeting notes.
• You still need to take some notes during the meeting:
  • important topics – AI might miss or inappropriately reduce a topic
  • key facts and numbers – speech-to-text AI might miss or misunderstand key words
  • key decisions – AI might misunderstand decision words as small remarks
• Do your review shortly (hours, at most a few days) after the meeting, so you can remember key facts that AI may have mixed up.

Install GPT4All and let it rewrite your text by choosing a suitable model and prompt, as demonstrated in this article. GPT4All runs localy on your computer, so you can use this method for confidential data. (Updated for GPT4All 3.4.2, original version)

Issue

You speak and write some English, but not near native quality. However, you need to publish English texts, even if just as a chat message to a team. Since you cannot run each chat message by a native speaker friend because they have lots of other things to do, you are looking for machine help.

Solution

Let AI do the job. AI is said to occasionally hallucinate about facts and conclusions, but it’s good about grammar and spelling. So you create the content, and AI can adjust the words.

Someone said, “AI is like a parrot and a text mechanic.” That’s what I’m trying to use it for. Comparable to a pocket calculator in Mathematics. Not a supercomputer or Wolfram Alpha, but a pocket calculator.

Tool

Because your content may not be public, e.g. intended for an internal message within your organization, you cannot use online services like Grammarly. Therefore, you must utilize a locally running AI. A colleague pointed me to GPT4All.io . Their smaller models run on computers with as little as 8 GB of RAM, while the larger models require 16 GB. You don’t need a GPU; the standard CPU of your desktop/notebook computer is sufficient. If you have the opportunity, run it on a Mac with ARM CPU. I found a 2021 M1 Mac Mini to be about 5 times faster than a Windows or Linux desktop with an Intel CPU. GPT4All supports all major operating systems: Linux, Mac, Windows.

Initial one-time Setup

Download GPT4All app

1. Point your web browser to gpt4all.io
2. Download the installer for your operating system type (Windows, Mac, Ubuntu). Ubuntu should also work for Debian, Mint and other Debian-derived systems.
3. Install the downloaded package on your computer.
4. Select “no” to the opt-in questions (after all, you are doing this to keep your text confidential).

Download Models

Note: Do this when you have good, unmetered Internet connectivity. The models are approximately 3-8 gigabytes each to download.

1. Start GPT4All
2. In the left pane, click on the “Models” icon.
3. In the lower left corner, click on “Downloads”.
4. In the top right corner click the „+ Add Model“ button.
5. Identify the line of the “Mistral Instruct” model.
6. In the right corner of the model’s line, click on the “Download” button. Wait until about 4.1 gigabytes have downloaded.

If you want to experiment with other models, repeat step 6. You can also get models not in the list by entering a search term in the long top line „Discover and download models by keyword search…“

If you want to download only one model, choose “Mistral Instruct”.

Configure the App to Speed Up Your Text Checking Workflow

1. Start GPT4All
2. In the left navigation pane, click on the „Settings“ gear icon, then on the „Model“ line. A „Settings“ window opens.
3. In the semi-left pane, click on the „Model” line. The header of the main pane is now “Model Settings”.
4. Click on the unnamed line between „Model Settings“ and select “Mistral Instruct” from the dropdown
5. Click on “Clone”
6. Edit the “Unique Name” field to something like “Mistral Instruct Grammar Checker”
7. Edit the „Prompt Template“ field to read (Please ensure that the prompt text is a single line. Although I divided the lines to improve readability, doing so has resulted in poorer outcomes.) :

[INST]Please correct any grammatical or spelling errors in this text
while staying as close to the original content as possible.
Do not consider the context when making your corrections
and only provide the revised version.

%1 [/INST]

• Optionally: empty the „Suggested FollowUp Prompt“
• Close the Settings and the GPT4All Chat app

Daily Use

1. Open the GPT4All App
2. In the left navigation pane, click on the „Chats“ icon.
3. In the top center „Choose a model“ drop down field, select your newly configured model, e.g. “Mistral Instruct Grammar Checker”
4. In the lower “Send a message” field, enter your sentence and click on the arrow in the right side.
5. Check the output. If you believe that the AI output can be improved, or if you simply wish to view a different version, click on the ‘Regenerate response’ button.
6. After 5-10 questions, the output tends to become less useful, like claiming spelling errors in the input while the output is identical to the input, start a „+ New Chat“ in the top of the semi-left navigation pane.

To check another sentence or paragraph, just repeat from step 4.

Conclusion

GPT4All can help you improve your English communication by providing grammar and spelling corrections for your written text, always respecting the privacy of your data. This tool uses artificial intelligence to identify errors in your writing and suggest corrected versions. You can use this app daily as a part of your writing routine.