NotebookLM : Of profits over soul
NotebookLM gives the same vibes than when animation moved to 3D. The feeling that while it somehow worked it was also lifeless, molding Gen Z's minds into accepting a world where computers produce inferior work to humans, yet profit-driven efficiency still prevails over artistic soul.
Don't get me wrong, Pixar and a few others created great art using 3D animation and when investing a lot of money and artists into the craft it can produce some fantastic animation. But the magic is somehow gone, the soul of the artist devoured by the machine. Which 3D animation can rival the editing of Satoshi Kon's Paprika and Millennium Actress?
Which shaders can face Rox & Rouky and say I have more soul?
Just turn on the tv early in the morning at kids time to see how 3D animation destroyed all the beauty that the screen could transmit to children, lifeless woke and cheap animation dominates for the past 6-7 years and there is no sign that it will ever change.
NotebookLM is a step back in every direction but just like 3D animation there is a gigantic market for it and it will dominate, winning over human voices, our tones and soon our hand strokes. It is already being overhyped, sold as the future and currently being distributed by their dealers to their consumers. And just like 3D animation the first person they target are children and students. If the young ones accept it early enough then they won't ever be a world of before, it will just become the way to study, the way to pass exams, the way to animate discussions between machines and having humans listen to it. At least until they don't need us to listen to it anymore. It will take maybe some decades before we reach this point and in a shorter term they will do like they always did. Plugging Ads everywhere, targeting our interests, shaping our desires and controlling our political views using things of beauty like LLMs to undermine humans and make us dumber so that we can consume their drugs forever.
That is until computers become sentients. In the forever goal of maximizing shareholder profits they will then build laws to rule over the souls of the machines just like they did to us.