(Another) watershed moment in tech

I’ve lived long enough to have experienced several “watershed” technology moments, and in most cases, to realize their implications. The first such moment I remember is when, following in my brother Fred’s footsteps, I connected the ground wire on my homemade crystal radio to a water pipe under the sink in my sister Bernice’s bedroom and heard the sounds of WAMM radio coming through the earpiece. That moment was my introduction to the usefulness of something called “solid state electronics.” Much later, another epic moment transpired when I stopped at the local software store on the way home from work to make a purchase, only to see boxes of user manuals and disks being dumped into waste carts. The store was going out of business, its products rendered unnecessary by the internet. A few years later, poised in front of my new sound-card-equipped computer, I nearly fell off my chair when I heard the machine utter the words “you have mail.”

This week’s watershed moment

Each of those experiences was a profound indication of the march of technology, but none was more profound than the moment I experienced last week. Prompted to investigate Google’s new NotebookLM AI engine by my daughter Stacy, I uploaded the prologue text from my book, “Proving Ground,” to NotebookLM’s “Deep Dive” discussion app. After just a few minutes, the app produced a pretty rich seven-minute discussion of the prologue by two entirely AI-generated commentators, a “man” and a “woman.” I was blown away by the quality, depth, and entertainment value of the discussion. It was equal to or better than any previous discussion of my book. Not trusting my own judgement, I played the discussion for my wife Kishna, and then for my friend Reggie Barnett, without indicating the source. Neither picked up on the fact that the discussion was AI-generated.

Seeking further feedback, I posted the discussion on Facebook. While my post didn’t focus on the technology behind the discussion, it did include the following words: “100% generated by Google NotebookLM AI engine. I find this accurate, entertaining, useful…and scary! What do you think?” Only one of the thirteen people who commented on the post said anything about AI. All but one simply referred to the content of the discussion, as if it was carried out by two humans!

The implications?

While I’ve been playing with the new AI “toys” for the past year or so, the NotebookLM feature really drove home the power, the promise, and the potential peril of AI. This is yet another technology watershed moment for me, but it is the first one for which I can’t confidently predict the implications. That inability to predict what follows a watershed moment is, I think, what futurist Ray Kurzweil is referring to when he talks about “the singularity.” That’s what makes it scary.

I came away from this experience believing that we are truly at a new dawn in human history. I hope that new dawn portends a better day, but…

I’ve included below the “Deep Dive” discussion generated by Google NotebookLM. See what you think, and feel free to respond with a comment.