Steven Johnson is a very meta writer. He often writes about science and technology and likes to immerse himself in what he reports on, even using them to change the way he writes his books. A few years ago, a few months before ChatGPT launched and the AI craze was sweeping the tech world, Johnson got an assignment for a magazine that sent him really, really deep down the AI rabbit hole. He never came back.
Now, in addition to writing books, Johnson works at Google. He is part of a team developing a product called NotebookLM (the team calls it “the notebook”). It’s a note-taking and research tool: You upload files and import web links, and Notebook’s Gemini-powered artificial intelligence helps you organize things, extract information, and better understand topics. When I asked Johnson how he joined Google, he said, “They reached out and said, ‘Hey, you’ve been dreaming about this ideal software tool that helps you organize your ideas, helps you write, helps You make the connection. We think we can do that now. Johnson is signed and has been with Google since the summer of 2022.
The product itself first launched in 2023 as Project Tailwind and has since been rebranded and massively expanded. Just last week, the team launched Audio Overview , which will generate a podcast based on the information you provide — featuring two chatty hosts, plenty of back-and-forth conversation, and insights into “Dive Deeper” and “Buckle Up” A truly remarkable preference for these two phrases. It’s fun, complex, and progresses quickly.
As far as this episode is concerned edge broadcastJohnson joins to discuss his fascination with artificial intelligence, his time at Google, and the present and future of NotebookLM. We discuss the complexities posed by such tools and whether it’s possible to let artificial intelligence do your research and homework.
We also discuss how to ensure that tools like NotebookLM are both accurate and easy to fact-check, why contextual windows are more important to the future of AI than most people realize, and how often an AI podcast host should say “Like” in a conversation “. We talk about Johnson’s own process as a writer and creator, and how artificial intelligence is changing the way he works.
If you’d like to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
