Virtual Podcasters: Useful or Scary?

I’ve received three or four emails this week from people talking about Google’s new “NotebookLM” tool.

The tool is eerie.

You upload content to it, and it can create a podcast in which two virtual, but very lifelike, hosts discuss the content’s key ideas and most interesting points.

One friend was a little freaked out when he tried this. The virtual podcasters had an engaging conversation, in which they quite accurately summarized many, many pages of my friend’s own content.

One of the most fascinating—and amusing—examples of this was generated by an anonymous Reddit user, who somehow managed to create this podcast in which the virtual hosts are stunned to learn (gasp) they… aren’t… real people.

While the tool isn’t perfect, it does do a good job of summarizing vast quantities of information very quickly. That spurred two thoughts:

●????? What kind of workers might be put out of work by a service like this? Can I leverage my understanding of the answer to stop doing low-value, easily replaceable tasks?

●????? How can I use a tool like this to make me smarter and more valuable to others?

The service is unlikely to displace any real-life podcast hosts. The two virtual hosts are a bit predictable and formulaic, even if they do a great job of synthesizing the provided data.

To offer one potential use case, over the past five years I have written over 250 articles, most of them based on what happened to me during the prior week. To be honest, I have an unclear sense of what my major themes have been and what other insights might be unlocked if I better understood the work I have already done. But… who has the time to analyze 250 documents?

That’s right, NotebookLM does.

We all have too much information trapped in too many documents. But now we also have two virtual, nearly free, workers who can abstract the key points into a five to ten minute summary. It’s not necessary that such summaries be perfect, only that they can be accurate enough to allow you to decide whether the documents warrant further inquiry.

Rather than worrying about whether AI might replace us, I’m choosing to look for ways that AI can help me to add more value, faster.

And there are so many, because most of us have more good ideas—and profound questions—than we have time to pursue them. Tools such as NotebookLM offer us highly efficient ways to pursue projects and lines of inquiry that once seemed too time consuming to consider.

If you liked this post,?please share it.?

I help successful leaders and their teams agree on what needs to change and how to make it happen. I am the author of?Fearless?Growth and?The Agility Advantage.?

For more strategies, videos and free materials, please visit?www.setili.com. If you are curious, here are a few quick examples of the work we do. You might also enjoy my Fearless Growth Podcast.

Contact me anytime to discuss your situation and how I can support you.