Notebook LM disappointment

I had hoped that Google's new Notebook LM might be able to ingest my blog and provide some valuable insights, particularly with its whizzy new feature which generates an audio dialog between two AI-generated podcasters discussing whatever text you feed to them. I was disappointed. 

I uploaded the root Chew Your Grouse URL to the tool hoping it would process the entire 20 years of my blog but instead all it took in was the posts that were on the splash page, so around a month and a half's worth. From this small sample it generated a 16-minute discussion which basically tried to reiterate and regurgitate the main points of what I had said since mid-October. So it took me back through my canvassing and the death of Rascal, etc. It was hard to listen to, really not a good use of my time. The only legitimate quasi-value additive observation it made was that maybe I identified more with Leon than Rascal since Leon is the more introverted of the two cats and I characterize myself as introverted. That's a little interesting. Though maybe I said that myself.

In any case, I was underwhelmed. If I could easily upload the whole corpus of the blog to Notebook LM I would, but I only have the big text as an XML export, not a text file, and lord knows I'm not spending the time to figure out how to convert the one to the other right now.

Given the energy-intensiveness of AI, I think we need to be careful in how we play with it, just as we should try to drive our cars efficiently and mindfully. While I'd be interested in seeing eventually how an AI might digest my blog and offer insight back to me, it's really no rush. No reason to do a lot of emitting for that purpose. And if it never quite happens, hey, I'll be dead and who will care then?

On the other hand, Natalie was very productive this break in going through her bookshelves and packing up ones she no longer needs. Mary saved a few, so did I, the others we took to the Goodwill store up on Weaver Dairy, which is veritably packed to the gills with stuff. I felt kind of guilty for only dropping things off and not buying anything to lessen the crush.