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 12 months 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 group 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 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 strategy to see how the app behaves and the way we behave with the app.
Johnson discovered his strategy to Google by the use of a lifelong obsession with software program as a “a dynamic thought partner,” a instrument to hurry up and improve the artistic course of. When he was in school he grew to become 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 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 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 may stage up a brand new era of thought instruments. Oh, wait, he mentioned to himself, this factor that has all the time been at the back of my thoughts is now going to be doable. Scenarios unthinkable even a 12 months earlier than had 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 according to his considering. In May 2022, a small group within the experimental Google Labs division cold-emailed Johnson. They arrange a gathering through 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 grew to become a part-time adviser to the small group, 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 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 Project Tailwind, begins by creating a knowledge 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’ll be able to 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 common 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 data got here from, so customers can verify the accuracy of its output.
Google will not be the one firm envisioning merchandise that allow folks 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 selected job. Woodward acknowledges a “core similarity.” But he argues that NotebookLM focuses extra on enhancing a workflow, and is geared to supply 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.
