Steven Johnson has written 13 books, on subjects 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 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 workplaces in New York to point out me what his staff has been creating.
It’s referred to as NotebookLM, and the best method 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 venture. 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 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 artistic 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 hyperlinks. It anticipated net 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 finally turned an fanatic of Scrivener, a mixture phrase processor and venture organizer fashionable with ebook authors. (I’m a fan too.)
When Johnson bought entry to OpenAI’s GPT-3 textual content generator in 2021, he acknowledged that AI may degree up a brand new technology 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. Scenarios unthinkable even a 12 months earlier than have been abruptly 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 step with his considering. 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 permits 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 turned a part-time adviser to the small staff, at first sharing the workflow of an expert 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 bought 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 a knowledge 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 expertise—partly powered by its just-released improve Gemini. The solutions mirror not solely what’s in your supply materials but additionally the broader basic understanding of the world that Gemini has. A important characteristic 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 just isn’t 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 selected process. 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 persona, whereas NotebookLM is designed to don’t have any such pretensions.