[jrm4]

Great to see this: Fellow tech-geeks, ignore the NotebookLM thing at your peril.

NotebookLM, far and away, has been the "AI Killer App" for the VAST MAJORITY of bright-but-not-particularly-techy people I know. My 70ish parents and my 8 year old kid are both just blown away by this thing and can't stop playing with it.

Edit: As someone pointed out below, I absolutely mean just the "podcast" thing.

[wodenokoto]

As someone who doesn’t listen to podcasts what perils will I suffer from not making podcasts in notebookLM?

[jrm4]

Yeah, I deliberately worded it that way because I would have said the same as you.

I don't really see MYSELF being into it, but it just seems to WOW the hell out of a lot of people.

[pmontra]

I can understand why it's cool for a lot of people but it's the opposite of a time saver to me: they are a time loser, if that's a word. It's the same thing of those videos that serve a purpose only because some people (and developers) are not able to read or feel intimidated at walls of text. They are at a competitive disadvantage only partially mitigated by having videos for even the smallest text page.

[globular-toast]

I don't get it. Are you saying "bright but not particularly techy" people can't read? What would I be missing out on by ignoring this just like I do every other podcast? I've literally never heard of someone learning anything from a podcast except scattered knowledge from another field that will never be useful.

[jrm4]

Oh, probably nothing.

Again, I'm absolutely like you and I'm with you. I don't much do podcasts either, but in a way this is why I worded it like this. It struck me as a fun party trick to ignore, but it really seems to GRAB a lot of other people.

[jeffbee]

Are we talking about NotebookLM generally or specifically the podcast stunt?

[jrm4]

Good question: I absolutely mean the podcast stunt.

[dartos]

Idk if I’d call it a killer app.

The podcasts are grating to listen to and usually only contain very surface information I could gain from a paper’s abstract.

It’s a wildly impressive technical achievement though.

[hitradostava]

The point being made is that while this may be grating for you. It is magic for a large part of the population. This combined with chatgpt advanced voice mode shows a direction of travel for AI agents. It makes it possible to imagine a world where everyone has personalized tutors and that world isn't very far away.

[dartos]

> It makes it possible to imagine a world where everyone has personalized tutors and that world isn't very far away.

My issue with AI hype is exactly this. Everything is “imagine if this was just better enough to be useful”

“Imagine if we had an everything machine”

“Image everyone having a personal assistant/artist/tutor/programmer”

“Imagine a world where finance is decentralized and we all truly own our digital stuff”

<rant>

I’m not much of a visionary, admittedly, but it’s exhausting being told to imagine products that only half exist now.

Having worked with LLMs in the autonomous agent space, I think we’re very far away from agents actually doing useful work consistently.

There are still so many problems to be solved around the nature of statistical models. And they’re hard problems where the solution, at least at the product level, boils down to “wait for a better model to come out”

I’m just tired of people imagining a future instead of building useful things today

<\rant>

[giraffe_lady]

At any given time there are millions of children who will fall for the coin behind the ears trick. It's magic to this large part of the population. That doesn't make it a technique I need to evaluate for my professional practice, because I'm not a clown.

[hackernewds]

Ariana already has personalized tutors. Wikipedia, for example is just arriving in different forms. you could argue chatbots are superior in many forms versus a podcast where you can't just scan information

[factsaresacred]

It does have a tendacy to meander or spend too time reflecting on a topic instead of distilling the details. However the new ability to add a prompt improves this greatly.

Some instructions that worked for me:

- Specifics instead of high level

- Approach from non-critical perspective

- Dont be philosophical

- Use direct quotes often

- Focus on the details. Provide a lesson, not reflections

- Provide a 'sparknotes' style thorough understanding of the subject

[magic_hamster]

Oh, when was this added? I'll have to check it out.

[aembleton]

Added about a week ago

[thomasahle]

Every time I've listened to a NotebookLM podcast on some article or blog post, I would have much preferred a simple AI text to speech of the same article.

[notachatbot123]

Kaleidoscopes also offer mindless fun, I would rather suggest those.

[hackernewds]

you might just know very old non-tech people. but the non-tech people that will generally be the larger tech people of the future are gen z and they're definitely not on notebookLM. they are on AI character chatbots

[jrm4]

No dispute there.