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Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

illuminate.google.com

111–120 of 251 posts

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#111
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you listen to an auto-generated podcast? Seems like removing the humans from the equation kind of defeats the purpose.

I would be interested in seeing an AI developed to listen to auto-generated podcasts, removing humans from the equation altogether.

Of course the whole point would be in adding an acoustic side channel imperceptible to humans but affecting the listening AI in interesting ways.

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#112
I guess I am in my grouchy old person phase but all I could think of what the Gilfoyle quote from Silicon Valley when presented with a talking refrigerator.

> "Bad enough it has to talk, does it need fake vocal tics...?" - Gilfoyle

Found it: https://youtu.be/APlmfdbjmUY?si=b4-rgkxeXigU_un_&t=179

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#115
post #12

One problem I see with this is legitimizing LLM-extracted content as canon. The realistic human speech masks the fact that the LLM might be hallucinating or highlighting the wrong parts of a book/paper as important.

Frankly, humans also sometimes remember things incorrectly or pay excess attention to the less significant topics while discussing a book.

In this regard, LLMs are imperfect like ourselves, just to a different extent.

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#118
post #87

Why not, if you could also interject with questions, remarks, or "cut the chase" like remarks. Also it's weird that they focus only on AI papers in the demo, and not more interesting social stuff, like environment protection, climate change, etc

Guess they want to avoid any political backlash that could arise from topics like that, which will happen inevitably.

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#119
post #87

Why not, if you could also interject with questions, remarks, or "cut the chase" like remarks. Also it's weird that they focus only on AI papers in the demo, and not more interesting social stuff, like environment protection, climate change, etc

Google's fingers get burned whenever it lets its AI touch social topics.

Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio

#120
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the what you are trying to get out of a podcast. Most of the podcasts I listen to are because I want to learn something new in an entertaining format. I'm not listening to develop parasocial relationships with the hosts, so removing that element could be a good thing for me. Of course if you listen to podcasts because you like the parasocial aspect or the celebrity interviews, then yeah... Not really a poi…

IMO, a lot of the best podcast content comes from a spontaneous tangent. You’d lose those moments with autogenerated podcasts.

With regard to AI, it's easier to make a whole new episode on a tangent. It works better this way.
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