Google's AI Tutor: The Future of Personalized Learning

TL;DR

Google's Notebook LM turns any document into a personal AI tutor, complete with audio summaries and pinpointed sources to accelerate your learning. #AINews #EdTech #VentureStep

INTRODUCTION

Imagine needing to quickly comprehend a complex research paper or a lengthy article before a crucial presentation. The pressure to consolidate vast amounts of information into a digestible format is a common challenge. What if you could upload those documents and have a personalized AI tutor explain them to you, even generating a podcast-style summary to listen to on the go?

In this episode of Venture Step, host Dalton Anderson explores a groundbreaking technology from Google that does just that. Dalton delves into Google's Notebook LM, a project that has evolved from its early days as "Project Tailwind." With years of personal experience using the tool, he provides a unique perspective on its capabilities, from creating study guides and quizzes to its most impressive new feature: AI-generated audio overviews.

Dalton discusses how this tool is set to revolutionize self-learning, higher education, and even corporate onboarding by providing a controlled, source-based AI that minimizes hallucinations. He demonstrates its power live on the show, transforming a dense technical webpage into an easy-to-understand audio summary, showcasing a future where learning is tailored to every individual's needs and style.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Google's Notebook LM acts as a personalized AI tutor by exclusively using documents you provide, which significantly reduces AI hallucinations and builds trust in the answers.
• The new "Audio Overview" feature can convert lengthy, complex documents into a short, human-like podcast summary, making dense topics more accessible and easier to learn on the go.
• The tool provides precise citations for its answers, highlighting the exact location in your source documents where it found the information, allowing for quick verification and deeper study.
• Practical applications extend beyond the classroom to corporate onboarding, where new hires can query company regulations, or for anyone needing to quickly understand dense material like legal or technical documents.
• Unlike many AI tools, Notebook LM represents a tangible step toward useful, everyday AI for the general public, moving beyond niche technical use cases.

FULL CONVERSATION

Dalton: Welcome to Midget Step Podcasts, where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book review. ¹Imagine you're having issues comprehending a complex research paper, lengthy articles, or are just in a rush and scrambling to get a good understanding of something before a presentation. ² These are less-than-ideal situations where you need to compile lots of different information and consolidate it quickly.

Dalton: There is a way to do that now and have it output it as a podcast, which is really cool. ³It's a project that Google has been working on for a while and I've been utilizing for a couple of years. ⁴ The original project was called Project Tailwind. Project Tailwind has since evolved with many different names, and they released some new features that I think are worthy of discussion. ⁵

Dalton: Today, we're going to be exploring a potentially groundbreaking technology in self-learning and learning in universities, basically giving yourself the opportunity to have your own personalized AI tutor per subject. ⁶With the documents you upload, the AI will only reference those documents. ⁷ So you have fewer issues with hallucination. If you're not familiar, hallucinations are when you ask something and the AI just freaks out and says something crazy or unrelated. ⁸

A Traveler's Misstep: An Update From Japan

Dalton: But before we dive into the agenda today, I do have some updates. ⁹Last week, I had an episode talking about how I was in Japan and having some issues finding my place, which I luckily did. ¹⁰ Well, I have another trial. When I go abroad, I like to immerse myself and try to make friends, and the way I do that is by playing sports. ¹¹In Mexico, I played three times a week minimum. ¹²In Japan, I played some pickup volleyball and pickup soccer. ¹³

Dalton: Yesterday, I was playing on these turf fields with my turf shoes, and the turf is super sticky. ¹⁴One of the players on my team hurt his knee because there was too much grip and his knee buckled. ¹⁵Then, maybe five games in, I took a shot, the guy blocked it, and I received the ball after the deflection. ¹⁶ I went to go past the guy, and he put his leg out. I tried to stop myself from stepping on his leg, but I had a lot of momentum. ^17171717 My leg got stuck underneath my body weight, and I just landed on my pinky toe. My whole ankle folded at a 90-degree angle. ¹⁸So I may have broken my ankle or have a severe sprain. ¹⁹

The Challenge of Navigating an Injury Abroad

Dalton: This is really difficult when you live in a big city that's not really built for these kinds of things, especially when you don't know the language. ²⁰My current stance is I've got it elevated. ²¹I have no means of icing it because the place I'm living at only has a mini-fridge with no real freezer. ²²If I buy ice, it's just going to melt. ²³There's no pharmacy or food places right next to my house; the closest one is about 800 meters away. ²⁴I'm having trouble booking a place to get an x-ray because my foot is crazy swollen and all purplish now. ²⁵

So basically, I can't walk. I have no means of storing ice. I have no means of easily getting food or water. I have no means of real, useful transportation. ²⁶

Dalton: The next issue I have is getting an X-ray because everything is in Japanese. ²⁷My computer isn't converting everything into English. ²⁸It does it for some websites, but not all. ²⁹So I'm trying to figure out where to go to get an x-ray before I travel to Korea, because I'm still going to be abroad for another two weeks. ³⁰Then I have another week and a half in Las Vegas for a conference. ³¹I was going to run a marathon in two weeks, but obviously, that's scrapped. ³²My plan tomorrow is to talk to the US embassy and hopefully, they can help me coordinate everything. ³³

Introducing Google's Personal AI Tutor

Dalton: Okay, so that was just a general update. Let's get into the LLMs. ³⁴Let me just give a brief background of Google's notebooks. ³⁵I might mistakenly say Jupiter notebooks, which is a popular notebook that uses Markdown and Java to organize your Python code. ³⁶If I say that, I actually mean Google notebook. ³⁷Google's notebook was originally encoded as Project Tailwind. ³⁸Tailwind came about maybe two and a half years ago. ³⁹They've been really sneaky about it and haven't really advertised it. ⁴⁰

How Notebook LM Minimizes AI Hallucinations

Dalton: With an LLM that you control all the source material, it has to reference those things. ⁴¹And in those questions that you ask the AI model, it will send you the sources, like, "Okay, I got this from this document and at this exact point." ⁴²It highlights it for you on the web page. ⁴³ I would use it to study. For things that I was struggling with, I would use the LLM to find stuff. ⁴⁴I'd ask a question, and that question has to get pulled from the source material that I'm looking for. ⁴⁵Then I would go and read more about it. ⁴⁶

One of the things that was demoed was you could upload a file, and that file would make a notebook guide. That notebook guide would have a study guide, a quiz, and they would also have this AI podcast thing that would create a podcast from the text that you gave it. ⁴⁷

Dalton: The new feature is that you can upload a lot of big documents—they could be PDFs, Word docs, websites, whatever. ⁴⁸But the other stuff, like asking it questions and it providing the source material, has been around. ⁴⁹It would give you like five different sources, showing you the ones that it utilizes. ⁵⁰With this overview, I would like to show you a live demo. ⁵¹

A Live Demo: The Future of Learning

Dalton: What you'll see is the notebook guide, you'll see an audio overview, and you'll see this other thing where he drops into this audio overview and has a conversation with the AI host. ⁵²That is not a current feature that's available, but it was demoed at a keynote. ⁵³ Okay, so I'll play this video real quick.

Dalton: Okay, so this "join" feature that he's discussing isn't currently available, but I think this is the sickest part of this whole product. ⁵⁴You could ask questions, break down complex topics, and get it in the perspective that you want and can easily understand and comprehend. ⁵⁵ Insane.

The Power of the "Audio Overview" Feature

Dalton: So that is what they demoed. What we have now is this audio overview feature, and that allows you to listen to a podcast of the material that you provide. ⁵⁶ I think it's something else, honestly. I feel as if it's so human-like. ⁵⁷When my friend Ryan was over, he was like, "What podcast are you listening to?" ^58585858I said, "No, this isn't a podcast. This is AI." ⁵⁹ He was like, "Wait, what?" I was like, "Yeah, you can upload a file and it creates this AI podcast for you." ⁶⁰

He was so impressed with it. He's like, "OK, what if I gave you a document right now? Would it just do it?" And I was like, "Yeah, if you give me a document you want, we could upload it and listen to it together." ⁶¹

Real-World Test: Summarizing Army Regulations

Dalton: So we did that. He's in the army, and he was super impressed with it. ⁶²It breaks down this 100-page rule regulation document that the Army posted. ⁶³ I'm sharing my screen again, and we'll just play. This is AR670-1. ⁶⁴

Dalton: You can see how it's not perfect. It said "AR670-1 Ramen." I don't know where they're getting their ramen. 65I'm not gonna play the whole 11 minutes. 66 There are some suggested questions. For example, "Are there changes to Army uniform regulations regarding wear, appearance, and insignia?" 67You click it, and it's kind of like a chatbot. 68Okay, so the first thing is the policy for breastfeeding and pumping. 69It clarifies the policy. 70Then you can click on the source, as I mentioned earlier. 71Right here, it brings me to the exact location that it referenced. 72I think it's super cool and an amazing way to help yourself learn. 73

Revolutionizing Education and Onboarding

Dalton: Not every teacher or professor is going to be able to appease every student and their learning style, but you can appease your own learning style now and teach yourself things. ⁷⁴Instead of a teacher trying to get every student to comprehend a lesson, you could lay the groundwork. ⁷⁵If you need to use this LLM notebook to talk with these AI teachers, or if you're an auditory learner, you can use these LLM notebooks. ⁷⁶Or, if you missed a class, which is super common, you could have the notes of what chapters the teacher covered. ^77777777A lot of schools now require an online textbook, so you could just copy and paste those chapters, throw it in here, and there you go. ⁷⁸

Imagine you have an onboarding process with a whole bunch of rules for your department. Instead of having all these meetings or providing all these notes, just send them an LLM notebook link and have them ask questions there. ⁷⁹

Is AI Ready for Mainstream Public Use?

Dalton: My friend Ryan asked me recently, "So what is AI gonna do for me? ⁸⁰ We always talk about AI this, AI that. What really is it doing for me?" ⁸¹And I was like, "Fair question." ⁸² There's so much money being pumped into AI. Is it providing useful things to the public yet? ⁸³The answer is probably not really. ⁸⁴The general public doesn't use AI every day, besides people that program or have repetitive tasks. ⁸⁵I think this is a big step in the right direction. ⁸⁶

Exploring AlphaFold and Alpha Proto for Drug Discovery

Dalton: Let's make one together. ⁸⁷I'll go to DeepMind research paper publications and I'm just going to go to Alpha Proto. ⁸⁸I'll use this URL. ⁸⁹It's a Google DeepMind publication related to their Alpha Proto model. ⁹⁰ Now I'm generating the audio overview. It can also do an FAQ, study guide, table of contents, and a whole bunch of other stuff. ^91919191Okay, it's done. ⁹²

Dalton: So basically, Alpha Proto is different than AlphaFold. ⁹³AlphaFold was understanding protein structures and the interactions between outside influences. ⁹⁴Alpha Proto is about creating new proteins to help solve issues. ⁹⁵Alpha Proto and AlphaFold should enable Google and their partners to enhance their capabilities for drug discovery and drug enhancements. ⁹⁶Theoretically, they could alter the DNA of animals and plants. ⁹⁷You could get plants that are drought-resistant and pest-resistant. ⁹⁸With these gene edits with AlphaFold, you'll be able to get all the benefits without the negatives. ⁹⁹It is pretty groundbreaking and can be applied for other things, like enhanced drug discovery, which I think is great. ^100100100100

A Call to Action for Educators and Students

Dalton: So what do you think about it? Do you think that you would utilize Notebook LM? ¹⁰¹Is it something you wish you had in college to help you out on those late nights? ¹⁰² Let me know. I would appreciate it if you tried this out and shared your experiences in the comments below. ¹⁰³I invite educators and students to try this out and see if this technology helps them learn faster or gives them a better understanding of the topic. ¹⁰⁴

This overall garbage instead of utilizing the tool for what it's meant to... I don't know where people see it. Maybe it's just clickbait stuff... instead of being like, "Wow, this is a great learning tool," no, "you can make millions of dollars using this." Not true. ¹⁰⁵

Dalton: Of course, if you like this episode or you like the podcast, can you please like or subscribe? ¹⁰⁶ It really irks me when people, before they even talk about their topic, are like, "Please smash that like button. Subscribe." No, I'm not doing that. ¹⁰⁷But if you enjoy it, please like and subscribe. ¹⁰⁸

What's Next: A Look into the Reflection Model Controversy

Dalton: I have a couple topics for next week. ¹⁰⁹I think there are some things I need to discuss regarding the Reflection 70 billion parameter model. ¹¹⁰Apparently, there are some scientists accusing the company of fraud. ¹¹¹ I have to look into that. That's one of the reasons I didn't talk about it this week. ¹¹²I know in the last couple of episodes, I've been talking about how it's like the best-in-class model. ¹¹³But then the research paper was posted, and there were question marks. ¹¹⁴It's a big red flag when you publish a research paper and people can't replicate your results. ¹¹⁵There have been some accusations from the scientific community that the Reflection paper is a fake and the results they are stating are false. ¹¹⁶I don't know that for sure, but I'm going to look into it once everything settles down. ¹¹⁷

Dalton: But of course, I appreciate you joining in on this discussion of Google's notebook. ¹¹⁸I think it's a wonderful product. ¹¹⁹It has definitely made learning for me easier. ¹²⁰ Wherever you are in this world, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and thank you for listening. I hope to see you next week. ¹²¹ See ya. Bye. ¹²²

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Google
• Google Notebook LM
• Project Tailwind
• Jupiter Notebooks
• DeepMind
• Alpha Proto
• AlphaFold
• All In podcast
• Reflection (AI model)
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

INDEX OF CONCEPTS

Dalton Anderson, Google, Notebook LM, Project Tailwind, LLM, AI Hallucinations, Jupiter Notebooks, Japan, Mexico, Korea, Las Vegas, US Embassy, Ryan, AR670-1, DeepMind, Alpha Proto, AlphaFold, All In podcast, Joe Rogan, Call Her Daddy, Reflection model, AI tutor, personalized learning, drug discovery, gene editing