Interesting use for Google Notebook

Have I written about Google Notebook LM, an AI tool?

It’s pretty cool and I have a cool way to use it.

Google Notebook allows you to upload documents such as PDFs, Google docs and I believe Word documents. It also has the capability to accept web links and YouTube URLs. You can also ask the Google AI (which I think is Gemini) to go out and search the web to answer a question you pose in your prompt.

What you are doing in effect is creating a RAG (retrieval augmented generation) that transforms the general LM into a more specific LM and focuses only on the documents and links you have as your sources.

In the next section, I will highlight some of the more salient features of the Notebook.

Google Notebook Layout

Below is a rather blurry screen shot of the Notebook. To the left, you will see a single PDF that was uploaded as a source. In the middle is the chat, where the top provides you its summary of the source or all of the sources and the middle provides suggested prompts and finally the bottom holds the box for your prompt.

Off to the right there are lots of wonderful goodies.

• Audio overview: this is the one that creates the podcasts for you
• Video overview: this one appears to be more of a pictorial image with a voice overview
• Mind map: I love this one as it provides you with the overview of the topics of all sources
• Reports: you can create various types of reports in this section
• Flashcards: I haven’t used yet, but I assume you can use this to learn new materials
• Quiz: Again, an educational use
• Infographic: New and probably is going to be lots of fun
• Slide deck: Another new feature and lots of fun
• Data table: Haven’t used yet but appears promising

You can save some of the chat and it will save on the right. Previously, when you closed the Notebook, you would lose your chats; thus, I was saving my chats off to the right (as well as in my Word documents). Now, it appears the chats do not go away.

The idea

Note in the upper right-hand corner of the image there is a “Share” icon. I have a free version of Notebook and I can share my Notebook, either privately or publicly. So…that brings up an idea.

I actually got this idea from a YouTuber (AI News and Strategy Daily/Nate B Jones) but he talked about creating his own app(?) to provide a way for a recruiter or hiring manager to query your experience. Maybe someone comes upon your LinkedIn profile and clicks on your website URL. The hiring manager/recruiter is then invited to chat with your program that calls upon the AI. Instead of an interview, they do an exploratory prompting session to learn more about your work history and capabilities.

Since this is new, just doing that might intrigue them to stick around and play with your AI. And you would stand out and be memorable due to this intriguing way of using AI.

Now, Nate Jones did admit that getting this in front of people will be difficult. And, you would have to have a lot of real experience to be able to show what you can do. It can’t be a surface level “I did this”. People just graduating will have a harder time, but it won’t be impossible. They would just have to use their school projects.

My twist on the idea

My twist is that instead of writing a program, I could use Google Notebook since it acts as a RAG. I already had a 65+ page accomplishments word document that I could use.

In this scenario, I don’t think your resume alone will work because there is not enough material to work with. But you might not need a 65+ page document, which was a stream of consciousness type of writing. So, lots of spelling and grammatical errors.

But you still going to have to put out some work. You need to put in just enough technical details to show you are not just telling stories or lying about your capabilities.

And the infographic and slide decks are prone to verbal errors. Already my infographic has some word salad in there that I’m going to have to correct…somehow.

If you are interested in taking a peek, here is the link.
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/71e50fe1-241f-4946-b05b-ec14fabdaf7a?authuser=1