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 television presenter and a podcast host. He’s a keynote speaker who doesn’t should name himself that in his LinkedIn profile. And for over a yr now, he’s been a full-time worker of Google, a standing that’s clear when he badges me into the search large’s Chelsea workplaces in New York to point out me what his staff has been creating.
It’s referred to as NotebookLM, and the best manner to think about it’s as an AI collaborator with entry to all of your supplies that sits in your metaphorical shoulder to information you thru your venture. NotebookLM was soft-launched to a choose group earlier this yr however is now out there to all as an “experiment”—that’s Google’s low-risk technique to see how the app behaves and the way we behave with the app.
Johnson discovered his technique to Google by the use of a lifelong obsession with software program as a “a dynamic thought partner,” a device to hurry up and improve the inventive course of. When he was in faculty he grew to become obsessive about HyperCard, Apple’s software program that broke data into chunks and allowed you to navigate an information-space by way of hyperlinks. It anticipated internet navigation earlier than the online existed. “I fought mightily to turn HyperCard into that dream tool, but it wasn’t quite ready,” he says. He ultimately grew to become an fanatic of Scrivener, a mixture phrase processor and venture organizer well-liked with ebook authors. (I’m a fan too.)
When Johnson acquired entry to OpenAI’s GPT-3 textual content generator in 2021, he acknowledged that AI may stage 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 potential. Scenarios unthinkable even a yr earlier than had been instantly on the desk. Johnson didn’t but know that Google not solely had related giant language fashions, however was already engaged on a venture very a lot in keeping with his pondering. In May 2022, a small staff within the experimental Google Labs division cold-emailed Johnson. They arrange a gathering by way of Starline, a Google Labs venture that enables for eerily intimate in-person conferences. “I basically had a conversation with a hologram who said, ‘You know, this thing you’ve been chasing your whole life? We can finally build it,’” Johnson says. He grew to become a part-time adviser to the small staff, at first sharing the workflow of knowledgeable author. “Here’s four or five engineers, here’s an actual author, let’s just watch him,” is how Google Labs head Josh Woodward sums up the method. Eventually Johnson acquired concerned within the improvement 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 Project Tailwind, begins by creating an information set of your supply materials, which you drag into the device from Google Docs or the clipboard. After the app has digested all of it, you may then ask NotebookLM questions on your materials, because of Google’s giant language mannequin know-how—partly powered by its just-released improve Gemini. The solutions replicate 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 knowledge got here from, so customers can verify the accuracy of its output.
Google is just not the one firm envisioning merchandise that permit folks create customized information 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 job. Woodward acknowledges a “core similarity.” But he argues that NotebookLM focuses extra on enhancing a workflow, and is geared to offer superior accuracy in its outputs. Also, he says that the OpenAI merchandise have extra of a character, whereas NotebookLM is designed to haven’t any such pretensions.