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 tv presenter and a podcast host. He’s a keynote speaker who doesn’t must 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 places of work in New York to indicate me what his group has been creating.
It’s known as NotebookLM, and the simplest means 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 12 months however is now accessible 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 means of a lifelong obsession with software program as a “a dynamic thought accomplice,” a device to hurry up and improve the inventive course of. When he was in school he turned obsessive about HyperCard, Apple’s software program that broke data into chunks and allowed you to navigate an information-space by hyperlinks. It anticipated internet navigation earlier than the online existed. “I fought mightily to show HyperCard into that dream device, but it surely wasn’t fairly prepared,” he says. He ultimately turned an fanatic of Scrivener, a mix phrase processor and venture organizer fashionable with guide 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 degree up a brand new technology of thought instruments. Oh, wait, he mentioned to himself, this factor that has at all times been behind my thoughts is now going to be doable. Situations unthinkable even a 12 months earlier than had been abruptly on the desk. Johnson didn’t but know that Google not solely had comparable giant language fashions, however was already engaged on a venture very a lot consistent with his considering. In Might 2022, a small group within the experimental Google Labs division cold-emailed Johnson. They arrange a gathering through Starline, a Google Labs venture that enables for eerily intimate in-person conferences. “I mainly had a dialog with a hologram who mentioned, ‘, this factor you’ve got been chasing your entire life? We are able to lastly construct it,’” Johnson says. He turned a part-time adviser to the small group, at first sharing the workflow of an expert author. “Here is 4 or 5 engineers, here 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 device 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, because of 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 additionally the broader basic understanding of the world that Gemini has. A vital 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 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 particular activity. Woodward acknowledges a “core similarity.” However he argues that NotebookLM focuses extra on enhancing a workflow, and is geared to offer superior accuracy in its outputs. Additionally, he says that the OpenAI merchandise have extra of a character, whereas NotebookLM is designed to haven’t any such pretensions.