Steven Johnson is a very metaphysical writer. He writes frequently about science and technology and likes to delve deeply into the topics he writes about. He even uses it to change the way he writes books. A few years ago, a few months before ChatGPT came out and the AI boom took over the tech world, Johnson got a magazine assignment that took him really, really deep down the AI rabbit hole. And he never came back up.
In addition to writing books, Johnson now works at Google. He's part of the team developing a product called NotebookLM—”Notebook,” as the team calls it. It's a note-taking and research tool: You upload documents and import web links, and Notebook's Gemini-powered AI helps you organize things, extract information, and better understand a topic. “They reached out,” Johnson says when I ask him how he came to Google, “and said, 'Hey, you've been dreaming of this ideal software tool that helps you organize your thoughts, helps you write, and helps you make connections and brainstorm. We think we can do that now.'” Johnson signed up and has been at Google since summer 2022.
The product itself launched in 2023 as Project Tailwind, and has since been renamed and expanded in a big way. Just last week, the team launched Audio Overviews, which generates a podcast based on the information you provide—featuring two chatty hosts, lots of back-and-forth, and a truly notable fondness for the phrases “deep dive” and “buckle up.” It’s fascinating, it’s complicated, and it gets better very quickly.
In this episode of The VergecastJohnson comes to talk about his fascination with AI, his time at Google, and the present and future of NotebookLM. We talk about the complicated problems that come with such a tool and whether it's OK to let an AI do your research and homework.
We also talk about how to make sure a tool like NotebookLM is both accurate and easily fact-checked, why context windows are more important to the future of AI than most people realize, and how often AI podcast hosts should say “like” in conversations. And we talk about Johnson's own process as a writer and creator and how AI is changing the way he works.
If you want to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: