In one sample listen, you might be wowed. But over a series, Biff and Buffy sound like a bunch of gushing sycophants, those office but kissers you want to kick in the pants.
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Beyond the point of showing that this can be done (reference the old saying about why a dog does something) – what is the use? Will people really use this as a mode to consume content?
Source: Wow Us with your AI Generated Podcast… by Alan Levine
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I agree with you Alan about the initial amazement about what is possible, I am not sure how purposeful it is. I listened to David Truss’ podcast he posted and was left thinking about my experience with David Truss’ writing. I imagine that such tools may provide a possible entry way into new content, but I am not sure what is really gained by putting this into an audio format? If as David has suggested (quoting Adam Grant), “The future belongs to those who connect dots.” Does an autogenerated podcast help with that? (On a side note, anytime someone talks about connecting dots, I am reminded of the wonderful work of Amy Burvall.) I wonder in this case if the focus on the product overlooks the learning gained through the process of highlighting the patterns and finding a trace through all the dots?
I personally listen to a lot of text using the phone’s accessibility features. I think that a text summary read in this manner is both sufficient and maintains the divide, whereas I feel that the artificial voices sit somewhere in the uncanny valley. However, the more I think about this, I wonder what is the uncanny valley anymore and whether we are “all already interpolated” within the system, especially after reading Jill Lepore’s dive into the world of the talking chatbot.
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It’s true, I’ve done this a few times and while it can be impressive, I do see that this can get a bit old pretty fast. Except for one thing… I think that if you are asking it for a general summary of light content, you are going to get a light and fluffy Deep Dive response. However, if you want to understand something really challenging or different or dense, this could be a really good way to get a general understanding of tough to understand content. The Deep Dive into the Tetraverse video actually did a really good job of describing new content in a clear way. I found the kaleidoscope metaphor it mentioned an insightful analogy and I think that listening to the audio first would help someone appreciate the video even more.
Like any new and shiny tool, this Deep Dive podcast on Google’s Notebook LM will get a lot of play and then dwindle in use… but that doesn’t make it useless. I think it will find it’s rightful place as a way to take dense material and make it digestible. It will be a great content introduction, an insightful entry into new learning. It won’t become something you go to listen to where you also listen to your favourite podcast episodes. Still, it will have a purpose and you might find yourself going to it, or to a similar tool, when you have too much content to summarize, or if the content is significantly challenging to parse.
Although I have used chatbots like Gemini and CoPilot in passing, I have never used any of this in the classroom. It was therefore interesting…