The chatbot becomes the teacher

Steven Johnson is a very meta author. He writes frequently about science and technology, and likes to immerse himself in the things he’s covering, even using them to change the way he writes books. A couple of years ago, a few months before ChatGPT launched and the AI boom took over the tech world, Johnson got a magazine assignment that sent him really, really deep down the AI rabbit hole. And he never came back up.

Now, in addition to writing books, Johnson is also working at Google. He’s part of the team building 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 understand a subject better. “They reached out,” Johnson says when I ask how he got involved with Google, “and said, ‘hey, you’ve been dreaming of this ideal software tool that helps you organize your thoughts and helps you write and helps you formulate connections and brainstorm. We think we can do it now.” Johnson signed up, and has been at Google since the summer of 2022.

The product itself first launched in 2023 as Project Tailwind, and has since been rebranded and expanded in big ways. Just last week, the team launched Audio Overviews, which generates a podcast — with two chatty hosts, plenty of back and forth, and a truly remarkable penchant for the phrases “deep dive” and “buckle up” — based on the information you provide. It’s fascinating, it’s complicated, and it’s getting better really fast.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Johnson joins to discuss his fascination with AI, his time at Google, and the present and future of NotebookLM. We talk about the complicated issues raised by a tool like this, and whether it’s okay 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 conversation. And we talk about Johnson’s own process as a writer and creator, and how AI is changing the way he works.