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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

#191

Post by Quothling »

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...

I'm not really a podcast listener. I've listened to maybe 20 of over the past decade, but I sometimes hear my wife listen to some. I honestly couldn't tell that this one was AI generated and it wasn't immediately obvious (for me) from the site either. So I spent a few minutes making sure it actually was AI. To me it sounded a lot like most of the English podcasts my wife has listened to, a lot of those true crime ones and it frankly could easily have been one of the tech podcast that I've listened to over the years.

I imagine it'll be even harder to know if regular pod casters feed the AI a few episode they've made, to make it learn how to talk like they do. Like, would you really know if your true crime pod casters skipped a week if the AI sounded like them? I guess I don't really fall into the category for your question as I'm not a pod cast listener.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#192

Post by squigz »

eszed wrote: post #186
squigz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

" Reach excellence" is the key phrase there. Excellence takes time and work, and most everyone who gets there is mediocre for a while first. I guess if AIs become excellent at everything , and the gains are shared, and the human race is liberated into a post-scarcity future of gay space communism, then it's fine. But that's not where it's looked like we're heading so far, though - at least in creative fields. I'd inc…

> But that's not where it's looked like we're heading so far

I think one of the major reasons this is the case is because people think it's just not possible; that the way we've done things is the only possible way we can continue to do things. I hope that changes, because I do believe AI will continue to improve and displace jobs.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#193

Post by lynx23 »

It has always been hard to find quality entertainment if you have some standards... I am sure some countries have actual quality folk music. My country doesn't And whenever I switch on (by accident) a local radio station I end up cringing. I submit, those people that consume such content already, will not notice when AI takes over. They haven't noticed in the past, and they will not notice in the future, that they are fed crap 24/7.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#195

Post by thih9 »

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...

I think that’s the point - it’s increasingly more difficult to tell whether the content or parts of it are AI generated.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#196

Post by scotty79 »

firtoz wrote: post #125
djur wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminds me of my father who'd tell every kid that they're a genius, including myself. It got me motivated to try things, but whenever there was a failure, I felt terribly betrayed.

General advice from psychology is that when it comes to success you should praise the kids for things they control, like effort, time spent, inquisitiveness, concentration not things that are out of their control like talent or luck. Basically praise for what they did, not what they are.

When it comes to morality, it's the other way around. You praise kids for being good people when they do something right. Because you want them to internalize identity of a good person and associate it with those behaviors.

Internalizing identity of a genius is mostly useless, rarely beneficial, often harmful.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#197

Post by mrits »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #190

Ok, so, this is my impression from shoving philosophy texts into it. For things that already have a large body of scholarship, and have a set of fairly solidified interpretations, it is very good at giving summaries. But for works that still remain enigmatic and difficult to interpret, it fails to produce anything new or interesting. It seems to be a more complex version of ChatGPT, but it has the same underlying pro…

I thought it goes without saying that these types of things depend on existing data. It seems useful to learn about something on your walk or commute but not take your research to the next level.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#199

Post by corysama »

peutetre wrote: post #47
timoth3y wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of those books and podcasts, who cares if you read or listen to them? The point is that the books are sold and make the right lists. The point is that the podcasts are downloaded so ads can be sold or that vanity numbers can be reported. In terms of such music and films (whether created by human or AI) sometimes it's just because we are social creatures and need shared experiences to talk with others abou…

But knowing it's synthetic, why would you buy the book or listen to the podcast in the first place? There's nothing social or shared in a synthetic affectation.

In an ideal world, I would sit down with an espresso or a beer, and review collections of research papers on a regular basis.

In reality, between work, sleep and family, I rarely have anything resembling that kind of time and mental energy reserve available.

But, what I can afford is to listen to podcasts while doing other things. Doing that gives me enough of an overview to keep up with a general topic and find new topics that might be worth investing into deeper.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a podcast channel specifically for “Papers corysama wants to hear about at this moment”? I think so. Apparently, so do a lot of other people. But, they don’t want to list to my specific channel.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#200

Post by kombookcha »

Kiro wrote: post #178
kombookcha wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I strongly doubt that you're gonna be listening to this stuff recreationally once the novelty wears off, but if I'm wrong and you actually enjoy listening to two robots pretend to be excited about your documents and webpages long term, then have fun with that I guess.
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