Is NotebookLM—Google’s Research Assistant—the Ultimate Tool for Thought?

TL;DR: Today we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I. I go in depth with Steven Berlin Johnson, editorial director of NotebookLM and Google Labs and bestselling author of 14 books. We dive into the new version of NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered thought tool, that launches today. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. 

I sat down with bestselling author Steven Johnson to see if we could come up with a concept for his next project—using AI. 

We loaded 200,000 words of interview transcripts that NASA conducted and all of Steven’s reading notes since 1999 into NotebookLM, Google Labs’s personalized research assistant. We wanted to see if it could help us explore the story of the fire that broke out on a preflight test of Apollo 1 in 1967. 

The model condensed the disparate transcripts into readable formats like FAQs and chronological timelines. It sifted through the material to identify the catalyst for the fire. To top it off, NotebookLM even went through Steven’s Readwise notes to find a relevant, and unexpected, story from history that we could use to explain the origins of the fire. It was a wild ride, and we screenshare through the process live on the show.

NotebookLM uses software to organize ideas—something that Steven Johnson has been toying with for over three decades, first as a college student who built an app to organize his class notes, and now as the editorial director of NotebookLM and Google Labs. Steven is also the bestselling author of 14 books, including his latest release, The Infernal Machine, which chronicles the rise of the modern detective. (As an author himself, Steven emphasized that any material uploaded to NotebookLM is only sent to the model’s context window or “short-term memory,” and is not used to train the AI.) 

This is a must-watch for anyone who is a fan of Steven Johnson’s work, or is interested in AI as a creative tool. Here’s a taste: