Google’s NotebookLM can take a dense research paper and turn it into an entertaining podcast, but as with many tools that rely on large language models (LLMs), the final product is still prone to mistakes.
Ian Flynn, research assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, outlined pros and cons of using such tools in the planetary sciences in an October paper published in the American Geophysical Union journal Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists.
The study was also recently selected as a featured story, to be shared across AGU’s social media platforms. According to AGU, fewer than 2% of published papers are selected by editors to be shared this broadly. “It was a great honor for the paper to receive this recognition,” Flynn said.
Working with coauthor Sean Peters, a visiting assistant professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, Flynn chose three published papers to transform into NotebookLM audio overviews, which Google describes as “deep-dive discussions between AI hosts that provide in-depth summaries of the key topics in your uploaded sources.”
The overviews are supposed to objectively represent the sources they draw from, “rather than subjective opinions from the AI hosts.”
The three papers, all related to volcanism on Mars, were each in a slightly different format: One was a letter-type, five-page paper with three figures and one table. The second was a typical research paper, 29 pages long with nine figures and four tables. The final publication was a 23-page review paper with 11 figures.