I have to admit I am a bit blown away and a bit thrown off. I keep on hearing the argument of the inability of AI to reason but I just can’t understand how this conversation generated by Google Notebook LLM AI tool based off an upload of a PDF of my book The Emergence without any prompts was able to pull this off without the faculties of reason.
Here is a brief definition of reasoning from Dictionary.com - “the process of forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises”. This is exactly what just happened.
My book can be read for free here. https://www.theemergence.io/p/the-emergence-book-we-have-a-communication
First of all, this conversation between two AI bots set in a podcast interview style based off of ideas I have been writing about for over 10 years is adding context not just regurgitating words. I actually found myself thinking I wish I would have chosen their angle of introspection over mine.
Second of all, they went down lines of reasoning that I wouldn’t have necessarily spent so much time on if I were driving the interview but I can see why they chose these threads of ideas to reinforce their closing argument on behalf of the book. For instance they don’t even talk about Generative AI which is the entire prologue of my book and spend quite a bit of time on Blockchain which I wouldn’t have spent so much time on. But it actually works in serving the overall arc of the book. It actually referenced Mental Health which is not a big piece of my book but a significant part of what I plan to do with the Emergence moving forward.
I have been reading so many accounts of awe over this tool that I finally had to give it a shot. There really is no way to determine if these are humans or not other than a couple of small cuts in audio. But human editors do this as well. And the rhythm and flow in the conversation carrying kernels of ideas forward is mind blowing and seems to reveal a potential significant use case for media digestion which is to help people dig deeper into subjects they may normally not dig into.
Of course there are dangers found in being deceived by AI building their own narratives but we are deceived all the time by narratives created by Algorithms and humans so just like everything else. Trust yet verify.
Admittedly, I have mixed emotions about this AI coming from Google who is the father of algo manipulation over users but they are a major part of the transformers that all Gen AI is based on so I guess it makes sense. Like my book says and the AI interviewers agree. It is up to us in how we use these tools and if we choose to build more resilient communities. But it needs to start from the bottom, not the top.
My book The Emergence discussed by AI agents from Google’s Notebook LM.