Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 511 posts

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#111

Post by tarsinge »

timoth3y wrote: post #21

NotebookLM's is incredibly good at generating the affect and structure of a quality podcast. This is in-line with all art, music, and video created by LMM at the moment. They are imitating a structure and affect, the quality of the content is largely irrelevant. I think the interesting thing is that most people don't really care, and AI is not to blame for that. Most books published today have the affect of a book, b…

Remembering the 90s when I grew up really into alternative music I think what has changed is maybe public perception. AI back then would not have changed much because mainstream pop music was already accepted as generic derivative existing only to make money. Quality was already seen as secondary to be successful. But nowadays maybe due to social networks incentives instead of journalists curation only numbers seem to matter.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#112

Post by kombookcha »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #29
wenbin wrote: post #20

Do people actually enjoy this type of AI-generated "podcasts" vs human-produced shows? As a podcast listener, I lose interest if I can tell the audio is AI-generated...

If you had received one of these podcasts, say 3-5 years ago, I guarantee you wouldn't be able to tell it's AI generated. And I'm willing to bet it's valid for 90%+ of the people here, even those heavily involved in the field. The quality of the voices, the mimicking of umms, and ahhs, the subtle speaking over each other, they really are extremely impressive. If you want you can do a test with people that haven't hea…

> 3-5 years ago, I guarantee you wouldn't be able to tell it's AI generated

You would however be able to tell that it was extremely obnoxious and bland, and without the novelty of the technical trick, you would not be listening to it.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#113

Post by riffraff »

am I the only one surprised by by how much the example sounds so much like the "Money Stuff" Podcast? E.g. the male host going low with his voice and the female host using a more informal speech pattern. I wonder if it's just a perception thing.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#114

Post by djur »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #86
peutetre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would I buy those books or listen to those podcasts that are synthetic affectations of no substance?

I wouldn't read an AI-generated book (except maybe once as a curiosity), but I would definitely listen to AI-generated music if it were good enough. Reading a book is a time investment so I want it to convey the thoughts of another human being, otherwise it would feel like wasting my time. Listening to music, on the other hand, often is something that I do while I exercise, to keep a brisk pace and not get bored. As…

There's background sounds and there's music. Music can communicate as much as the written word. I've listened to algorithmically generated bloop-blops and it's fine for background sound, but if it can't touch my heart it's not really music to me.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#115

Post by gexla »

Getting complex jokes right would be impressive for me. I don't have much of a sense of aesthetic for music and most art. A painting looks good, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to appreciate. Half my music could be AI generated, and I wouldn't notice if it's background music. An AI generated wine would taste the same to me as a $1000 bottle. But I think most people understand comic genius. Chapelle's jokes are far better than someone who is on stage to deliver a performance with predictable material. You could probably apply this to all other art as well. A rap artist will recognize the genius of one artist vs another one who is cranking out junk. As with writing. As with music. I think we're still in that stage where we're impressed the AI can do anything at all.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#116

Post by IanCal »

timoth3y wrote: post #21

NotebookLM's is incredibly good at generating the affect and structure of a quality podcast. This is in-line with all art, music, and video created by LMM at the moment. They are imitating a structure and affect, the quality of the content is largely irrelevant. I think the interesting thing is that most people don't really care, and AI is not to blame for that. Most books published today have the affect of a book, b…

> the quality of the content is largely irrelevant.

But the content here has been fed into it deliberately.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#117

Post by GaggiX »

probably_wrong wrote: post #97
GaggiX wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was vomit, it will be recognized quickly, AI or not, not an hour of listening for sure; yes, even if it was sent by a friend.

I think you are leaving the human out of the loop. When a friend of mine recommends me something I'll lower my skepticism because I'm assuming my friend would not send me garbage. If a random podcaster says "I've proved that P=NP" I'd say "no you didn't", but if a math professor sends me that same link I'll keep listening to see where this goes. And I've definitely read texts making wild assertions that only at the e…

Even if you think your friend would only send good things, you would realize that something is vomit in less than an hour. I cannot understand someone listening to something for an entire hour and then whining that they waste their entire hour and it was vomit, you're not in a cinema, you didn't pay a ticket for it, you listen to something because you like it or move on.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#118

Post by djur »

famahar wrote: post #105

I uploaded my detailed game design document for a project I've been working on in my free time and it was kind of a weird confidence boost. The two hosts seem to treat ideas like their the most insightful relevatory information they've ever heard. After a few uploads of other documents you start to notice the same overly surprised tone.

This seems to be a common trait of a lot of the more "aligned", "helpful" LLMs out there. You can drop any random excerpt from your diary into ChatGPT and it will tell you about how brilliant, sensitive, and witty you are. It's really quite sickening.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#119

Post by VMG »

gexla wrote: post #115

Getting complex jokes right would be impressive for me. I don't have much of a sense of aesthetic for music and most art. A painting looks good, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to appreciate. Half my music could be AI generated, and I wouldn't notice if it's background music. An AI generated wine would taste the same to me as a $1000 bottle. But I think most people understand comic genius. Chapelle's jokes ar…

> Chapelle's jokes are far better than someone who is on stage to deliver a performance with predictable material.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan, but you don't have to look far to see that this opinion is not universal

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#120

Post by caulk »

authorfly wrote: post #90
richardw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think and hope that you're wrong. There's always been cheese, and there's a lot of it now. But there is still a market for top-notch insight. For example, Perun. This guy delivers an hourlong presentation on (mostly) the Ukraine-Russia war and its pure quality. Insights, humour, excellent delivery, from what seems to be a military-focused economist/analyst/consultant. We're a while away from some bot taking this ki…

Different strokes for different folks... We all seek different kinds of quality; I don't find Peruns videos to have any quality except volume. He reads bullet points he has prepared, and makes predictable dad jokes in monotone, re-uses and reruns the same points, icons, slides, etc. Just personally, I find it really samey and some of the reporting has been delayed so much it's entirely detached from the ground by the…

Drifting off topic, but do you have any examples of those analysis/sitrep content creators you prefer?
Post reply on HN