Back in June, I wrote a blog titled “How to use AI.”
Like many of us who earn our keep by our wits, I’d used ChatGTP and Perplexity as search engines on steroids. “What is Elon Musk’s e-mail ? “How will the new CFL rules make Canadian football more like American?” “Will we have rainbows day after day?”
Then I decided to use AI to plan. It did this shockingly well and lightning fast for a very specific trip to Japan.
I quickly learned AI’s uses are advancing so fast that what was earth-shaking last year is ho-hum today. For example, back in June, only a tiny fraction of Ontario physicians used AI to write up your visit, schedule referrals and prescribe medications. By next June, most of Ontario’s 18,000 family physicians will be using AI for that. So your doctor will actuallysee you and hear you when you come in for your physical. Game changer!
In the meantime, over 4,000 AI apps were launched this year, with predictions they’ll explode exponentially next year. Among them are AI apps that can make your AI-written document sound more human, like Write Human, Stealth and Quillbot.
So what’s your next step beyond using AI for search and for planning? It is absolutely not avoiding AI, or thinking you’re too old or ‘removed’ to learn about it now. Your AI train has not left the station. Indeed, the AI you use today is simply the slowest, clunkiest AI you’ll ever use. Besides, you’re reading this blog on a computer or your phone. There was a time when laptops and smartphones didn’t exist. And yet, here you are.
So here’s an app I fell across that lets you do stunning new things that, without it, would take far too many hours, and worse, brainpower many of us no longer have, to produce.
Notebook LM is an intellectual kitchen sink from Google. On a basic level, it lets you pour in all kinds of content to produce a different kind of content.
Say you need to create a 5,000 word report on something you know scandalously little about, but hey…here’s a report on the same subject from McKinsey, plus some new trends from World Data, plus a handful of Wikipedia links, and a podcast and a YouTube video of an expert lecture, and a slide deck you did on a parallel subject 10 years ago. Oh, and your own short-form notes from your Zoom call last week with a friend who does know the subject.
Upload them all and press “Report” and within two minutes, out comes 5,000 words (not 4,999, nor 5,001, but 5,000) that not only integrate and sum up this jambalaya of words and pictures and ideas and logical progressions, but it can make an argument for whatever you want them to conclude. If you want the report to read like it comes from the World Economic Forum, just say so, and it will be so.
But producing Reports is just a tiny part of what Notebook LLM can do. It can generate an AI podcast based on your sources.
I tried this by feeding in a copy of the book written by my wife, Dr. Jean Marmoreo, and journalist Johanna Schneller: The Last Doctor: Lessons in Living from the Front Lines of Medical Assistance in Dying.
Two minutes later I was listening to a conversation between a man and a woman, both experts in Medical Assistance in Dying, debating the ethical issues around MAiD (including some not in the book). In other words, Notebook is grabbing information from beyond its own kitchen sink.
Then I asked it to produce a slide show from The Last Doctor. Then an infographic, and then ohmygawd, a video.
It’s all head-spinning stuff and, in my next blog on AI, I’ll explore how another new app called Sora can create movie-quality videos on anything our pretty little brains can imagine. A-n-y-t-h-i-n-g.
And how did I stumble across Notebook and Sora?
Sadly, not in an organized way, but by feeling my way…and not via a digitally-native grandchild, but at lunch with someone I’d never met who sounded like a kid with a new toy, wagging his finger at me, like I am at you, to get moving on learning how AI can enrich your life, ease your work, and let you start thinking in ways your tired old brain never has.
And how old is my new lunch-friend? He’s 84.
Meanwhile…
1. Influencers with actual influence. Here’s Toronto Life’s annual list of 50 people“whose courage, smarts and clout are changing the world as we know it.”
Speaking of lists, we’ve entered List Season, so check out this truly great list of books to ponder anew, plus these from The Economist.
2. Japan now produces more nappies for incontinent adults than for infants. But the problem of longer lives and fewer kids isn’t Japan’s alone; the risks of depopulation are global.
Speaking of migration, here’s who’s benefited from it over the past 35 years. Oddly, Number 1 is Switzerland.
3. Nature’s not nice. First, the Sierra Club collapses. Next, a kayaker goes missing.Next, to die well, just live better. And finally, a not nice review of Margaret Atwood’smemoir.
4. No, your kid won’t be going pro. It’s every parent’s dream. But the odds of that actually happening are tinier than tiny. Same with becoming an astronaut (one in two million), a heart surgeon (one in every 100 doctors) or a Navy Seal (1 in every 2,000 serving military members).
5. Big questions for cold days. Like, when is a soup not a soup? Who are all the 1,565 billionaires alive today? And the top 500 musical artists? What is a ‘nepo nun’ and why do they have so much money? What’s the most expensive work of modern art ever sold at auction? And most important, why do lions roar two ways and not one?
6. Wish we could just head up to Oxford. There’s an exhibit of the life and work of John le Carré. that opened last month and runs through April 6th. It’s getting rave reviews: The Spectator hailed its “remarkable insight into le Carré’s working methods…a must for aficionados.” The exhibition’s curators weigh in here, and le Carré’s son, Nick Harkaway, sums up: “Oxford took my father in when he was desperate to escape his own father’s malign influence and kept his place when he couldn’t afford it. The Bodleian was his refuge then and his choice for his archive now. It feels like a homecoming.”
7. “Don’t wear sweatpants on airplanes.” Last week the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, launched a “be nice” campaign to combat passenger violence on U.S. airlines. Here’s “The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You.
Speaking of air travel, here’s America’s strangest flight to nowhere.
Speaking of the golden age, here’s Leonard Lauder, Collector.
Finally, here’s how to get downtown from the airport no matter where you land.
8. “May I meet you?” Bill Ackman is an apex-billionaire. But when it comes to meeting women, he’s a real gentleman – who wants more young men to act like he did.
9. Everything’s political. What does the Mossad think of Putin? Former director Yossi Cohen on negotiating with the Russian leader. Plus, there’s nothing there: Trump’s real issue around Epstein. Plus the politics of crossword puzzles. And for Ghislaine Maxwell, it’s freedom. And for the BBC-in-crisis, it’s not who-what-when-where-how, but why?
10. Cool maps, gifts and music. First, maps. Then, gifts of Krystyne Griffin’s jewelry and Emily Griffin’s robes and bags at their Eastern Bazaar Holiday Sale, Nov. 28 and 29, 12 noon to 6 p.m. 32 St. Andrews Gardens, Toronto. Then, music where previouslyunknown Bach pieces are played for the first time in 300 years.
11. What I’m liking. Marianne McKenna’s entry into last week’s “Write a letter to your 25-year-old-self contest.” Even though it came in after the deadline, it deserves honourable mention. Here’s why:
“…Push as hard as you can and set the template for living life to the fullest. Grab that trip when offered, jump into that opportunity to move, shift and build on accomplishment. Hesitate only for a moment to be sure that even the gauziest of safety nets might break your fall, and then go for it. Promise yourself you won’t regret, that you will love a lot of people along the way, and that you will hold true to the values you were handed from your family and extend them to your own children and the children of your friends. Life is a continuum to be lived to the fullest; enjoy every dawn and fall on your pillow every night with sweet exhaustion. The years may limit you physically but push through. The rewards flow daily and are not to be missed.”