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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

#231

The podcast about the comments in this thread :) https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/7973d9a3-87a1-4d88-98...

I loved when they said they were going to play a snippet from a generated podcast and then some robotic male voice says something like "Insert audio snippet here".

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#234
post #165

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.

Must have been prompted to be an American podcaster. Bring on the one that's all British and snarky!

Might be hard to spot if you’re American in the US, but LLMs feel very American even outside of region and language. Concretely, I have to constantly ask for recipes to be changed to metric. Less concretely, the undertones and mannerisms of politeness, positivity and “excitedness” comes across as very American to me, probably even within the rest of the Anglosphere. How would I describe it? Maybe similar to how you’d feel about a mix of Ned Flanders, Ted Lasso and some Valley girl stereotype – im sure it’s a bit off putting also for many Americans.

I guess it’s training data but also heavily RLHF. I doubt that the trainers are aware of their own cultural biases and values, and they may not care. And why should they? In either case, from a thousand yard perspective, it’s probably an effective vector for spreading “American values”, if you will.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#235
post #147
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.

How is it sickening? Tell it to roast you if you think it's a problem.

Sickening in the same way you get sick from eating too much sugar.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#236

I tried it with my resume, and the results surprised me. My observations: - They do some interesting communication chicanery where one host asks a question to me (the resume owner); I'm not there, so obviously I can't answer. But then immediately the co-host adds some commentary which sort of answers while also appearing to be a natural commentary. The result is that the listener forgets that Michael never answered t…

I tried it converting bureaucratic documents from Spain, even a paper sheet to just ask for holidays, and it created the funniest podcast I've ever heard. I'm glad I'm not the only one doing this stupid thing.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#237
post #69
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…

Yea there are much better examples of quality history podcasts, that are non-rambling. E.g. Mike Duncan podcasts (Revolutions, History of Rome), or the Age of Napoleon podcast. But even those are really just very good digestions of various source materials, which seems like something where LLMs will eventually reach quite a good level.

For such historical topics, my LLM-based software podgenai does a pretty good job imho. It is easier for it since it's all internal knowledge that it already knows about.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#238

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…

We’ve become so great at articulation and delivery of empty ideas. To a point, I completely block out people like these in real life. This is an entire career for many.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#240
post #83
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran one of my papers into it, mind blown how well they dumbed it down without losing too much details (still quite a lot was ommitted). I wonder if it's domain specific, and I wonder what's the variance by topic.

I did the same thing, running one book I edited and another book I wrote through it, and it did quite well. I was particularly impressed with how the “hosts” came up with their own succinct examples and metaphors to explain what I had written at much greater length. (I should mention that one of those books was in Japanese, and they captured it clearly in English.) Lately, when I just want to get the gist of a long a…

I dumped my kids weekly middle school update into it and it produced a nice summary that I could listen to while doing something else.
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