Is NotebookLM—Google’s Research Assistant—the Ultimate Tool for Thought? - Ep.22 with Steven Johnson

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2024-06-06に共有
We use it to find bestselling author Steven Berlin Johnson’s next project.

I sat down with bestselling author Steven Johnson to see if we could come up with a concept for his next project—using AI. The results were amazing.

We loaded 200,000 words of NASA transcripts and all of Steven’s reading notes since 1999 into NotebookLM, Google’s personalized research assistant. We wanted to see if it could help us explore the Apollo 1 fire and find relevant and surprising ideas from history that could work to explain it.

- NotebookLM condensed disparate 200,000 words of NASA transcripts into readable formats like FAQs and chronological timelines.
- It sifted through the material to identify the catalyst for the fire.
- The model even went through Steven’s Readwise notes to find a relevant, and unexpected, story from history that we could use to explain the history and origins of the fire

If you’re a fan of Steven Johnson’s work or you’re interested in AI as a creative tool, you need to watch this episode.

All of this happens as a live exploration of NotebookLM, and it’s a seriously wild ride.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Teaser
00:00:53 - Introduction
00:04:47 - The roots of Steven’s obsession with organizing ideas
00:08:16 - Steven’s belief in being receptive to organic connections
00:11:16 - NotebookLM’s northstar
00:14:02 - How GoogleLab’s note-taking app respects copyright law
00:16:17 - Using NotebookLM to analyze highlights from books that Steven has read
00:19:02 - Steven’s personal approach to curating valuable information
00:21:51 - Why NotebookLM shows restraint when it is asked to speculate
00:29:13 - Using the model to co-create the beginnings of a documentary
00:52:54 - NotebookLM generates the opening script

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Steven Johnson: twitter.com/stevenbjohnson
NotebookLM: notebooklm.google.com/
Steven’s newsletter, Adjacent Possible: adjacentpossible.substack.com/about
Steven’s latest book about the rise of the modern detective, The Infernal Machine: www.amazon.com/Infernal-Machine-Dynamite-Terror-De…
A few of Steven’s other books:
How We Got to Now: www.amazon.com/How-We-Got-Now-Innovations/dp/15946…
Where Good Ideas Come From: www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp…
The Ghost Map: www.amazon.com/Ghost-Map-Londons-Terrifying-Epidem…
Emergence: www.amazon.com/Emergence-Connected-Brains-Cities-S…
The Invention of Air: www.amazon.com/Invention-Air-Science-Revolution-Am…
コメント (16)
  • @bakersox1
    Exciting work. Via Wikipedia I learned that today, 6 June the release date, is also Steven's 56th birthday! Great way to celebrate. Happy Birthday, Steven!
  • @NDIDIAHIAKWO
    Awesome! But, how about the powerful "audio overview" function as advertised by Josh Woodward during the recent google i/o event? I noticed it wasn't among the recent notebookLM update. Any info on that??
  • @bucketofbarnacles
    Fantastic! Questions for Steven Johnson - When you save a quote: Is the note also saving a link to the quote in the source? - You mentioned saving your prompts: What about having a feature to favourite a prompt? This would amount a simple snippets feature.
  • @cblackall21
    Thankyou both for the excellent video. I live in Australia and so we now have access to NotebookLM. I've tried it and I'm very impressed—and I'm rarely impressed nowadays.
  • @vitalis
    What I don’t like about google apps is that they are in perpetual beta and it can be scrapped at any time. There should be a way to be able to export the data to another LLM
  • @stephenzeoli8117
    I read The Infernal Machine, and it is very interesting and educational and entertaining! Highly recommended.
  • @OriginalDramagirl
    As excited by this development as I was 30 years ago when I walked into the internet.
  • @davdfranzen
    It's so depressing notebook LM is only available in the US 😢