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NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

simonwillison.net

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Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#171

Post by elpocko »

GaggiX wrote: post #117
probably_wrong wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can argue your point all day, it will not resolve their cognitive dissonance. No matter how convincing, high-quality or entertaining it was, no matter for how long they happily consumed the content: it's AI-generated, they hate AI, therefore it's vomit, period.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#172

Post by krzyk »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #84
lynx23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, hardcore history? I dont even remember where I heard from him, but I think it was a Lex podcast. So I checked out hardcore history and was mightily disappointed. To my ears, he is rambling 3 hours about a topic, more or less unstructured and very long-winded, so that I basically remember nothing after having finished the podcast. I tried several times again, because I wanted it to be good. But no, not the…

Try “fall of civilizations.” Best pod I know. Maybe Shwep.net

Interesting stuff, but the music and the well, falls are quite depressing.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#173

Post by nordsieck »

lasc4r wrote: post #168
Torkel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just turn off the screen with youtube video playing and there's no difference from a podcast? I listen to Perun at the gym every week, audio only.

That's a paid service that some people balk at.

> That's a paid service that some people balk at.

AFAIK, it's only a paid feature to play video in the background.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#174

Post by valleyer »

kristopolous wrote: post #161

I just gave it straight up erotica from an old Usenet post. The results are hilarious. I also tried the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy. It was actually well done. https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/1d13e76e-eb4b-48ef-89... Also just uploading msdos 1.25 asm https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v1.25/source It was way better than I though I think the best is the self referential. This actual comment thread…

FWIW, I put MS-DOS's IO.ASM into this thing, and it did indeed make a fun little podcast that understood the high-level context quite well.

But when it makes references to such-and-such happening on line number X, and I go check line X, it turns out to be totally mistaken.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#175

Post by squigz »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #122
sqeaky wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm not the first to say this, but I think what's going on is that these AI things can produce results that are very mid. A sort of extra medium. Experts beat modern LLMs but modern llms are better than a gap. If you just need voice discussing some topic because that has utility and you can't afford a pair of podcasters (damn, check your couch cushions) then having a mid podcast is better than having no podcas…

> I know I'm not the first to say this, but I think what's going on is that these AI things can produce results that are very mid. A sort of extra medium. Experts beat modern LLMs but modern llms are better than a gap. I've seen people manage to wrangle tools like Midjourney to get results that surpass extra medium. And most human artists barely manage to reach medium quality too. The real danger of AI is that, as a…

> as a society, we need a lot of people who will never be anything but mediocre still going for it, so we can end up with a few who do manage to reach excellence

Do we though? That seems bleak.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#177

Post by roenxi »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #122
sqeaky wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm not the first to say this, but I think what's going on is that these AI things can produce results that are very mid. A sort of extra medium. Experts beat modern LLMs but modern llms are better than a gap. If you just need voice discussing some topic because that has utility and you can't afford a pair of podcasters (damn, check your couch cushions) then having a mid podcast is better than having no podcas…

> I know I'm not the first to say this, but I think what's going on is that these AI things can produce results that are very mid. A sort of extra medium. Experts beat modern LLMs but modern llms are better than a gap. I've seen people manage to wrangle tools like Midjourney to get results that surpass extra medium. And most human artists barely manage to reach medium quality too. The real danger of AI is that, as a…

AI looks like it will commoditise intellectual excellence. It is hard to see how that would end up making the world more mediocre.

It'd be like the ancient Romans speculating that cars will make us less fit and therefore cities will be less impressive because we can't lift as much. That isn't at all how it played out, we just build cities with machines too and need a lot less workers in construction.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#178

Post by Kiro »

kombookcha wrote: post #112
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true. I gave it a few documents and webpages of things I'm interested in and it was surprisingly engaging.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#179

Post by bambax »

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…

Yes, this is impressive, it has all the idiosyncrasies of podcasting, the pauses, turns of phrase, even the tones where we hear people putting things in quotes, etc.

... but it's also pointless. And it's likely different episodes on different topics will tend to sound very much alike; it's already the case here, I'm sure I heard another example where the two voices were the same.

In less than a year we all have learned to recognize AI images with pretty good accuracy; text is more difficult, but podcasting seems easy in comparison.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#180

Post by kristopolous »

valleyer wrote: post #174
kristopolous wrote: post #161

I just gave it straight up erotica from an old Usenet post. The results are hilarious. I also tried the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy. It was actually well done. https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/1d13e76e-eb4b-48ef-89... Also just uploading msdos 1.25 asm https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v1.25/source It was way better than I though I think the best is the self referential. This actual comment thread…

FWIW, I put MS-DOS's IO.ASM into this thing, and it did indeed make a fun little podcast that understood the high-level context quite well. But when it makes references to such-and-such happening on line number X, and I go check line X, it turns out to be totally mistaken.

So like, a regular podcast then?

I tried feeding it the voynich manuscript but it's just erroring out

Make sure you check the last link in my first post. It's the nightmares of Philip K Dick

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