Steven Johnson has written 13 books, on matters starting from a London cholera outbreak to the value of video games. He’s been a television presenter and a podcast host. He’s a keynote speaker who doesn’t must name himself that in his LinkedIn profile. And for over a 12 months now, he’s been a full-time worker of Google, a standing that’s clear when he badges me into the search big’s Chelsea workplaces in New York to point out me what his crew has been creating.
It’s referred to as NotebookLM, and the best approach to consider it’s as an AI collaborator with entry to all of your supplies that sits in your metaphorical shoulder to information you thru your mission. NotebookLM was soft-launched to a choose group earlier this 12 months however is now out there to all as an “experiment”—that’s Google’s low-risk approach to see how the app behaves and the way we behave with the app.
Johnson discovered his approach to Google by the use of a lifelong obsession with software program as a “a dynamic thought accomplice,” a instrument to hurry up and improve the inventive course of. When he was in school he turned obsessive about HyperCard, Apple’s software program that broke information into chunks and allowed you to navigate an information-space by way of hyperlinks. It anticipated internet navigation earlier than the net existed. “I fought mightily to show HyperCard into that dream instrument, but it surely wasn’t fairly prepared,” he says. He finally turned an fanatic of Scrivener, a mixture phrase processor and mission organizer widespread with ebook authors. (I’m a fan too.)
When Johnson acquired entry to OpenAI’s GPT-3 text generator in 2021, he recognized that AI may stage up a brand new era of thought instruments. Oh, wait, he stated to himself, this factor that has all the time been at the back of my thoughts is now going to be doable. Situations unthinkable even a 12 months earlier than had been abruptly on the desk. Johnson didn’t but know that Google not solely had related massive language fashions, however was already engaged on a mission very a lot consistent with his considering. In Might 2022, a small crew within the experimental Google Labs division cold-emailed Johnson. They arrange a gathering by way of Starline, a Google Labs mission that permits for eerily intimate in-person conferences. “I mainly had a dialog with a hologram who stated, ‘, this factor you’ve got been chasing your entire life? We will lastly construct it,’” Johnson says. He turned a part-time adviser to the small crew, at first sharing the workflow of an expert author. “Here is 4 or 5 engineers, this is an precise creator, let’s simply watch him,” is how Google Labs head Josh Woodward sums up the method. Ultimately Johnson acquired concerned within the growth of the product itself and was sucked in to the purpose of accepting a full-time gig. His title at Google Labs is editorial director.
NotebookLM, initially referred to as Mission Tailwind, begins by creating an information set of your supply materials, which you drag into the instrument from Google Docs or the clipboard. After the app has digested all of it, you possibly can then ask NotebookLM questions on your materials, because of Google’s massive language mannequin expertise—partly powered by its just-released upgrade Gemini. The solutions replicate not solely what’s in your supply materials but additionally the broader common understanding of the world that Gemini has. A essential characteristic is that each reply to your queries comes with a set of citations reporting the place precisely the data got here from, so customers can test the accuracy of its output.
Google will not be the one firm envisioning merchandise that permit individuals create customized knowledge units to discover with LLMs. At OpenAI’s developer day final month, the corporate launched customized mini-GPTs that may be tuned to a particular activity. Woodward acknowledges a “core similarity.” However he argues that NotebookLM focuses extra on enhancing a workflow, and is geared to supply superior accuracy in its outputs. Additionally, he says that the OpenAI merchandise have extra of a character, whereas NotebookLM is designed to haven’t any such pretensions.
