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

441–450 of 511 posts

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#441

Post by gcanyon »

fooblaster wrote: post #438
bongodongobob wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely backwards. There is no obvious score function for Go. That's how AlphaGo broke through, it was able to figure out a scoring method to actually accurately gauge how well it was doing so it could learn and improve.

If what you are saying is true, how does anyone know the game is over? there is a clear win condition. I know that just like with chess, knowing the current vAlue of the board is difficult, but win or loss is clear.

It is often the case that beginning go players don’t know when to quit. The question becomes more subtle as the players increase in skill. It is never as simple as “checkmate” — think more in terms of “mate in three”, except it’s more like “mate in 5-10” in several locations across the board.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#442

Post by bob_theslob646 »

chatmasta wrote: post #434
vietjtnguyen wrote: post #403

One of my favorite ChatGPT uses is voice chat during long drives as a pseudo, albeit interactive, podcast to learn about various technical topics at the edge of my knowledge base. This podcast generation is pretty amazing, but hopefully they make the "competency level" of the hosts tunable. One thing I love is being able to guide ChatGPT to the technical level I'm looking for. Maybe I'm just bad at finding podcasts,…

Lex Fridman gets the best guests and asks the worst questions. I’d love to be able to tune up the technical level of those interviews…

Could not agree more. Lex seems like a nice guy, but he's the worst interviewer ( I stopped watching him 2 years ago so maybe he has changed for the better )

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#443

Post by bongodongobob »

fooblaster wrote: post #438
bongodongobob wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely backwards. There is no obvious score function for Go. That's how AlphaGo broke through, it was able to figure out a scoring method to actually accurately gauge how well it was doing so it could learn and improve.

If what you are saying is true, how does anyone know the game is over? there is a clear win condition. I know that just like with chess, knowing the current vAlue of the board is difficult, but win or loss is clear.

Well yeah, every game has a clear win condition. But for chess and go, who is better or winning isn't as straightforward, especially for go.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#444

Post by empath75 »

emsixteen wrote: post #81
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...

> As a podcast listener, I lose interest if I can tell the audio is AI-generated... I've never naturally come across a podcast that's AI generated to have this reaction.

Youtube is full of AI generated glurge now, though.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#445

Post by roenxi »

Jevon23 wrote: post #217
roenxi wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are… many people who think that cities are worse off because of cars. Maybe not for the same reasons, but still.

I'm one of them. Taxpayers generally subsidise roads and as you might expect that means we have far too many of them.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#446

Post by kkotak »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #442
chatmasta wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lex Fridman gets the best guests and asks the worst questions. I’d love to be able to tune up the technical level of those interviews…

Could not agree more. Lex seems like a nice guy, but he's the worst interviewer ( I stopped watching him 2 years ago so maybe he has changed for the better )

Nope. Unfortunately he has veered to far into political slant for everything. Mostly towards the right.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#447

Post by dartos »

olavgg wrote: post #227

This is really awesome, I just added my startup website as a source, which is a mess of data engineering content written a little bit by myself and mostly by chatgpt 3.5 one year ago. What I find really impressive, it reads the big SVG I have on the landing page, and create a story about a real world use-case scenario. The result: https://intellistream.ai/static/intellistream_podcast2.ogg

SVGs are just text, after all.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#448

Post by hnmelb »

chatmasta wrote: post #434
vietjtnguyen wrote: post #403

One of my favorite ChatGPT uses is voice chat during long drives as a pseudo, albeit interactive, podcast to learn about various technical topics at the edge of my knowledge base. This podcast generation is pretty amazing, but hopefully they make the "competency level" of the hosts tunable. One thing I love is being able to guide ChatGPT to the technical level I'm looking for. Maybe I'm just bad at finding podcasts,…

Lex Fridman gets the best guests and asks the worst questions. I’d love to be able to tune up the technical level of those interviews…

I like his questions and interviewing style. It's just enough technical that a semi-technical person can do very well with those.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#449

Post by dartos »

karaterobot wrote: post #230

Let's say the use case is that you want to get a light, conversational summary of some dense, technical articles while you're out for a walk. Even if you thought this service was awesome on day one, if you used this every day for a month, would you hate it by the end or not? It's neat, but I can imagine it becoming repetitive quickly, and the seams starting to show after the initial impression wears off.

I’d hate it. In what world is a light conversational summary worth my time?

That being said, I don’t really listen to podcasts and I like digging deep into subjects that capture my interest, so this might just not be for me.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#450

Post by shepherdjerred »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #278
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right?! We call this goalpost moving now, but it is not a new phenomena. > It is interesting that nowadays, practically no one feels that sense of awe any longer - even when computers perform operations that are incredibly more sophisticated than those which sent thrills down spines in the early days. The once-exciting phrase "Giant Electronic Brain" remains only as a sort of "camp" cliché, a ridiculous vestige of th…

I think this is just general human behavior. Think about how comfortable your life is, and how the 17th century version of yourself would kill to live it. Then think about how you aren't in a perpetual state of ecstasy for being given this life. People quickly adapt to their current circumstances, take them for granted, and immediately want more.

You’re taking about advancements made through multiple lifetimes. This burst in AI has lasted about 15 years.

TBH I think it’s more of a knee jerk reaction from those tired of hearing about AI or who just want to post contrarian opinions (which I totally do sometimes, too).

Post reply on HN