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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

#281

Post by IshKebab »

handelaar wrote: post #277

So basically what you're all saying is how it's technically impressive. Okay. It is also completely and utterly worthless -- an inefficient and slow method of receiving not-very-many words which were written by nobody at all. The one and only point listening to a discussion about anything is that at least one of the speakers is someone who has an opinion that you may find interesting or refutable. There are no opinio…

Yeah they perfectly recreated the annoying useless podcast chat format!

Amazingly impressive but not actually useful.

I wonder why they wouldn't try to recreate a more useful format?

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#282

Post by devb »

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…

> I would definitely listen to AI-generated music if it were good enough

Why not just seek out the original works that the AI stole from?

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#283

Post by rafram »

handelaar wrote: post #277

So basically what you're all saying is how it's technically impressive. Okay. It is also completely and utterly worthless -- an inefficient and slow method of receiving not-very-many words which were written by nobody at all. The one and only point listening to a discussion about anything is that at least one of the speakers is someone who has an opinion that you may find interesting or refutable. There are no opinio…

> The one and only point listening to a discussion about anything is that at least one of the speakers is someone who has an opinion that you may find interesting or refutable.

No. Maybe that's true for you, but people enjoy learning in different ways, and some people learn best by listening to a discussion.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#284

Post by mdp2021 »

oddthink wrote: post #247
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…

It goes way too far, IMHO. It ends up sounding like a smarmy Sunday-morning talk show conversation, with over-exaggerated affect and no content. So far I've just fed it technical papers, which may be part of the problem, but what I got back was, "Gosh, imagine if a recommender system really understood us? Wow, that would be fantastic, wouldn't it?"

Already in the sample embedded by Simon. "Gosh", "wow", "like", "like", "like", "[wooooaaaawiiiing, woooooooaawiiiiiiing]", "Oh my god", "I was so, like...".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssDdqq_9TzI&t=34s [April Ludgate meets Tynnifer, Parks and Rec]

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#285

Post by sodality2 »

handelaar wrote: post #277

So basically what you're all saying is how it's technically impressive. Okay. It is also completely and utterly worthless -- an inefficient and slow method of receiving not-very-many words which were written by nobody at all. The one and only point listening to a discussion about anything is that at least one of the speakers is someone who has an opinion that you may find interesting or refutable. There are no opinio…

This is some insane catastrophizing. The value is that it turns it into a form factor that may be easier to consume, pay attention to, etc.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#286

Post by causi »

handelaar wrote: post #277

So basically what you're all saying is how it's technically impressive. Okay. It is also completely and utterly worthless -- an inefficient and slow method of receiving not-very-many words which were written by nobody at all. The one and only point listening to a discussion about anything is that at least one of the speakers is someone who has an opinion that you may find interesting or refutable. There are no opinio…

It's just format-shifting content. Rather than reading an article, someone might prefer to have the content casually chit-chatted at them. Nothing wrong with that, and a handy function if you're into that sort of thing. I can see uses for it.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#287

Post by double051 »

handelaar wrote: post #277

So basically what you're all saying is how it's technically impressive. Okay. It is also completely and utterly worthless -- an inefficient and slow method of receiving not-very-many words which were written by nobody at all. The one and only point listening to a discussion about anything is that at least one of the speakers is someone who has an opinion that you may find interesting or refutable. There are no opinio…

This sentiment feels overly dismissive about the possibilities here. This is the first pass at a new user experience, and I find it already to be compelling to try for various subjects.

Andrej Karpathy has been tweeting about it positively, and I believe he has a good intuition about these kinds of technologies. https://twitter.com/karpathy

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#288

Post by probably_wrong »

tkgally wrote: post #263

Inspired by this discussion, I had NotebookLM make three podcasts based on very minimal input: a one-line proverb, pi to 15 digits, and a short list of the most common words in English (“the of and to a in for is on that ...”). Here are the results: https://www.gally.net/temp/20240930notebooklmpodcasts/index....

From what I can gather there are three virtual speakers in the one about Pi: the man, the woman, and a third voice whose only role is to say "yeah" once. If they were real people, that third guy would definitely feel left out.

But the one about common words almost gave me anxiety: listening to two people discuss nothing as if they had spent hours of research and had something important to tell is very depressing.

Cool voices, although I'm getting the same vibe I get when listening to radio announcers from the 1920s [1]. If this were a human I'd be convinced that they're parodying the genre.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/that-we...

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#289

Post by Workaccount2 »

agentultra wrote: post #280
Workaccount2 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is scary about AI is the speed of improvement, not what it currently is. People keep forming these analogies/explanations with the inherent premise that what we have now is what AI is going to be - "It's actually kind of shitty so don't fret, not much will change". AI music creation has improved more in the last 5 years than keyboard accompaniment improved in the previous 40 years. It would be very brazen to bet…

... and it still won't be music. The reason why people like music is because another person wrote and performed it. We like watching other people. Give us an infinite playlist of elevator music and it just becomes oatmeal.

This is just a "no true Scotsman" take.

Popular music has already been synthetic and souless for decades now. People will listen to what sounds good to them, and we already know the bar is very low, and that the hard truth is that it is all subjective anyway.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#290

Post by lordnacho »

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 reason so much writing, podcasting, and music is vulnerable to AI disruption is that quality has already become secondary.

I was thinking this kind of thing is the perfect way to generate sports commentary.

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