Wow.
I’ve just experienced what people call “a ChatGPT moment”.
Not with ChatGPT, but with the NotebookLM tool from Google Research.
I’d heard that NotebookLM now has functionality to create an audio conversation between two AI characters who sound remarkably human. A couple of days ago, fellow futurist Tony Czarnecki drew my attention to how good this functionality is, as shown by an experiment on the Sustensis website. (See the section on the page entitled “Two AI-generated journalists discuss in their own podcast Tony Czarnecki’s article ‘Taking Control over AI before it starts controlling us’”.)
I thought I should try a similar experiment myself.
Here’s the outcome.
The blogpost discussed by these two AI characters is this one. That was the only input I gave to the AI.
It was very straightforward to create:
- Go to the NotebookLM site
- Click “New notebook”
- Click on the Link area and paste in the URL of my blogpost
- Click on Generate in the Audio overview section
- Wait a couple of minutes
Voila! A nine-minute audio conversation.
The conversation takes some ideas from my blogpost, mixes in related material from (I presume) its own knowledgebase, and adds extra flavour with some friendly humour and homespun analogies.
The resulting conversation sounds extremely human. There’s a fine rapport between the two hosts.
The content, to my mind, is questionable in a few places. But the AI characters get at least as much right as most pairs of real-life journalists would.
I’m looking forward to become more familiar with what NotebookLM can do!
PS While I was waiting for the audio WAV file to be generated, I took a quick look at the summary of my blogpost which NotebookLM had already created. Yes, that’s pretty good too!
This essay by David Wood discusses the possibility of achieving longevity escape velocity (LEV) by 2040, a scenario where biomedical interventions reverse the aging process, making individuals biologically younger and healthier. Wood argues that while the complexity of aging is acknowledged, there is sufficient understanding of the damage repair mechanisms involved, allowing for targeted interventions to combat aging. He outlines the potential roadblocks to achieving LEV, including funding constraints, societal resistance, and lack of collaboration within the longevity research community. Wood proposes “breakthrough initiatives” to overcome these challenges, including biomedical and financial reengineering, narrative reengineering, and community reengineering. Despite acknowledging the challenges, Wood concludes that the probability of reaching LEV by 2040 is significant, exceeding 25% but below 50%. He encourages individuals to play an active role in shaping the future of longevity research.
dw2 