Steven Johnson has written 13 books, on matters starting from a London cholera outbreak to the worth of video video games. He’s been a tv presenter and a podcast host. He’s a keynote speaker who doesn’t need to 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 places of work in New York to point out me what his staff has been creating.
It’s known as NotebookLM, and the simplest manner 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 obtainable to all as an “experiment”—that’s Google’s low-risk solution to see how the app behaves and the way we behave with the app.
Johnson discovered his solution to Google by the use of a lifelong obsession with software program as a “a dynamic thought accomplice,” a software to hurry up and improve the artistic course of. When he was in faculty 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 net navigation earlier than the net existed. “I fought mightily to show HyperCard into that dream software, but it surely wasn’t fairly prepared,” he says. He finally turned an fanatic of Scrivener, a mixture phrase processor and mission organizer fashionable with e book authors. (I’m a fan too.)
When Johnson obtained entry to OpenAI’s GPT-3 textual content generator in 2021, he acknowledged that AI might degree up a brand new era of thought instruments. Oh, wait, he mentioned to himself, this factor that has all the time been behind my thoughts is now going to be doable. Situations unthinkable even a 12 months earlier than had been out of the blue on the desk. Johnson didn’t but know that Google not solely had related giant language fashions, however was already engaged on a mission very a lot consistent with his pondering. In Might 2022, a small staff within the experimental Google Labs division cold-emailed Johnson. They arrange a gathering through Starline, a Google Labs mission that permits for eerily intimate in-person conferences. “I principally had a dialog with a hologram who mentioned, ‘You recognize, this factor you have been chasing your complete life? We are able to lastly construct it,’” Johnson says. He turned a part-time adviser to the small staff, at first sharing the workflow of an expert author. “This 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. Finally Johnson obtained 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 known as Undertaking Tailwind, begins by creating an information set of your supply materials, which you drag into the software from Google Docs or the clipboard. After the app has digested all of it, you possibly can then ask NotebookLM questions on your materials, due to Google’s giant language mannequin know-how—partly powered by its just-released improve Gemini. The solutions mirror not solely what’s in your supply materials but in addition the broader normal understanding of the world that Gemini has. A crucial function 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 shouldn’t be the one firm envisioning merchandise that allow folks create customized information units to discover with LLMs. At OpenAI’s developer day final month, the corporate launched personalised mini-GPTs that may be tuned to a selected process. 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 persona, whereas NotebookLM is designed to don’t have any such pretensions.