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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

#481

Post by llmfan »

HPsquared wrote: post #480
llmfan wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are already better than books for exploring some ideas. But in conversation form. Until we get better versions of o1 that can generate insights over days and then communicate them in book form the loss of interactivity and personalisation makes LLM books pointless.

An interactive conversation / tutorial session beats a book pretty much all of the time. Nonfiction books contain a lot of information that's redundant to a reader familiar with the topic, and not enough for someone new. They don't backtrack if you clearly missed an important point. And so on. It's like fractal geometry.

If an AI agent understands you (and book writing, and the topic of the book) well enough then it should be able to write you a pretty nice bespoke book.

I do suspect that interactive media is just strictly better in theory. But maybe there will be a period of time where bespoke AI-generated books make sense.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#482

Post by quest88 »

cm11 wrote: post #422
quest88 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Commercial creative workers are vulnerable because there's a billions-of-dollars industry effort to copy their professional output and compete with them selling cheap knock-offs. I agree there will be winners and losers of some proportion here. But I also think the people that want to pay for art will continue to pay as their motives and values are different. There's plenty of cheap knock-off art, but people still…

> The people that pirate were never going to pay in the first place. I think I agree with your larger point, but is this part true? When Spotify provided a much simpler UX to get the goods, people were happy to pay $10/month and Napster et al basically died.

That's a good point, my statement isn't so black and white as after all.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#483

Post by HPsquared »

llmfan wrote: post #481
HPsquared wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interactive conversation / tutorial session beats a book pretty much all of the time. Nonfiction books contain a lot of information that's redundant to a reader familiar with the topic, and not enough for someone new. They don't backtrack if you clearly missed an important point. And so on. It's like fractal geometry.

If an AI agent understands you (and book writing, and the topic of the book) well enough then it should be able to write you a pretty nice bespoke book. I do suspect that interactive media is just strictly better in theory. But maybe there will be a period of time where bespoke AI-generated books make sense.

The problem is a whole book worth is a long time to go between feedback and questions. I don't see how the agent would know the reader that well, knowledge is embedded in the brain and only comes out when prompted.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#484

Post by Qworg »

chefandy wrote: post #464
Qworg wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused about your point RE: infomercials et al - that's poor quality "content" that's been proliferating for, as you say, more than 50 years. Is that not the work of commercial creative workers? Did it not exist pre AI? There's an argument to scale, certainly, but the idea that "things were better in the past before these > came out" is generally a suspect argument. To your broader point - new tools for creatin…

>Is that not the work of commercial creative workers? Did it not exist pre AI? There's an argument to scale, certainly, but the idea that "things were better in the past before these > came out" is generally a suspect argument. The fact that all of that stuff was crap is central to my point. You might just need to give it another read. > Art is a way of seeing, not a way of creating. I don't think the technology is t…

There's no glib decree - a new technology has arrived. I'm being very honest about it - you can't put it back in the bottle, any more than you could put jacquard looms or machine woodcarving of trim could be. The position between art and craft can be endlessly debated and I put my stake in the ground.

You can disagree! Folks who are impacted have every right to be pissed, organize, take action. All of these creative endeavors existed _post technology updates_ though - that's my entire point. The need for art doesn't disappear - it changes. Standing athwart the change is a choice, but I'm not sure it is an effective position.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#485

Post by nathanasmith »

My main issue with this is the two hosts seem to be a little too in "sync" with each other. Like they're completing each other's thoughts and sentences without missing a beat. It breaks the illusion of it actually being two different people. Other than that I'm excited about the future of this kind of thing.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#486

Post by iwontberude »

iwontberude wrote: post #476
tinyhouse wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He improved a lot in my opinion. Most episodes are much better now and I appreciate the great guests and lengthy episodes (not that I have time to listen to a 3 hour episode, I usually listen in bed). I don't expect him to ask very technical questions. It's not that kind of a podcast and he will lose a lot of listeners if it becomes too technical.

He’s doing one of those launder shitty people’s reputations by giving them mostly softball interviews like Joe Rogan. It’s trading reputation for cash.

You can tell because most of his guest have a troubled past they are trying to PR their way around.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#487

Post by eszed »

squigz wrote: post #192
eszed wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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.

My skepticism is not (necessarily) based on the potential capabilities of future AI, it's about the distribution of the returns from improved productivity. That's a political - not a technological - problem, and the last half century has demonstrated most countries unable to distribute resources in ways which trend towards post-scarcity.

That may be your position as well - indeed, I think your point about "people think[ing] it's not possible" is directly relevant - but I wanted to make that more explicit than I did in my original comment.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#488

Post by sqeaky »

nmfisher wrote: post #478
roenxi wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, obviously not. Modern construction is leagues outside what the Romans could ever hope to achieve. Something like the Burj Khalifa would be the subject of myth and legend to them. We move orders of magnitude more cargo and material than them because fitness isn't the limiting factor on how much work gets done. They didn't understand that having humans doing all that labour is a mistake and the correct approach is…

I don't know, Dubai is...bigger, but I'd say it's vastly more mediocre city than Rome. To your original point, making things easier to make probably does exert downward pressure on quality in the aesthetic/artistic sense. Dubai might have taller buildings and better sewage system[0], but it will never have the soul of a place like Rome. [0] Given the floods I saw recently, I'm not even sure this is even true.

I will take clean water, safe sewage removal, and other modern amenities over the insubstantial vagaries of "soul" any day.

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#489

Post by stavros »

globnomulous wrote: post #469
bbor wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We accidentally invented general models that can coherently muse about the philosophical beliefs of Gilles Deleuze at length, and accurately, based on two full books that they summarized. You can be cynical until your dying day, that’s your right — but I highly recommend letting that fact be a little bit impressive, someday. There’s no way you live through any event that’s more historically significant, other than pe…

These aren't "general" models. They're statistical models. They're autocorrect or autocomplete on steroids -- and autocorrect/autocomplete don't require symbolic reasoning. It's also not at all clear to me what "symbolic" could mean in this context. If it means the software has concepts, my response would be that they aren't concepts of a kind that we can clearly recognize or label as such (edit: and that's to say no…

> These aren't "general" models. They're statistical models. They're autocorrect or autocomplete on steroids -- and autocorrect/autocomplete don't require symbolic reasoning.

This is very "humans are just hunks of matter! They can't think!".

Re: NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective

#490

Post by devb »

CaptainFever wrote: post #474
devb wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. How else are they "trained?"

Your comment implies that there is an existing piece of music, which can subsitute the generated music. While subsitutability varies from person to person, your original statement implies for me that each generated music has an accompanying original music that you can listen to instead (of which it was "stolen" from), since it is similar enough. I think we both know that that is not the case. I know that you likely i…

You don't have to be a big fucking nerd about it, you know what I meant. The generated music wouldn't exist without the foundation of stolen music made by people.
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