Category: Google

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AI Generated Podcast About my Yoghurt Muffins Post

Note: I suggest that you read my recent post about making yoghurt muffins first for context before reading this post.

This past weekend, my brother decided to play around with the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, using my recent post about making yoghurt muffins as the podcast topic source material.

Here are the results: “Podcast 1“, the first one I listened to and chuckled at throughout (see below), and “Podcast 2“, which is longer than the first, and a slightly different approach (again, see below).

As a reference, according to Wikipedia (here’s my archive), NotebookLM is a tool by Google that has an “audio summary” feature has the “ability to condense complex documents into engaging podcasts”. As referenced in the article, some of the generated podcasts have indeed been making the rounds on at least the media local to me; the samples played on the radio had the “voices” of two artificial “hosts”, one male and one female, and appeared to greatly impress the real radio host. The real human host on the radio then proceeded to create their own samples with the tool using local news items as source material, resulting in stunningly … seemingly accurate (or at least faithful to the source material) content and banter between the two artificial “hosts”. The voices — and banter — of the artificial “hosts” that were created sounded so real that the “hosts” did not sound obviously artificial in almost any, let alone many, of the usual ways that usually betray the artificiality or synthetic nature of the voices. “They” seemed to bypass the Uncanny Valley (here’s my archive) as well, if only because they weren’t associated with artificially-created “speaking” faces or other cues that might suggest that “they” were artificial.

To wit: My brother came up with two podcasts: Podcast1, and Podcast2, based on the blog page about the yoghurt muffins: The first podcast was roughly what I would have expected, based on the samples I’d heard on the radio, in the form of “entertaining” banter from the artificial “hosts” about the overall post and subject, while the second podcast followed a play-by-play style review of the post and its pictures.

Especially while listening to the first, I was often incredulously guffawing at how “seriously” they seemed to be taking the subject, to the point of “their” calling me a perfectionist; despite, uhm, seriously having approached mounting the post with its pictures and processing the photos for presentation, as well as of course maintaining my recipe archive, and again of course being fairly serious on a hobby level about my cooking, for the overall cooking project I have always had a certain laid back, “enjoying the fun” pleasure to mounting the posts. Which, I must admit, intentionally include a lot of photos detailing usually every last step and even micro-step. I would estimate that the “hosts” got it better in the second podcast by calling me meticulous.

The end result of the two podcasts is so good that except for the knowledge that it’s totally AI generated, I would actually believe that the podcast was hosted by real people and put together by real people providing real feedback. As such, I have a few responses to some of the “comments” that the “hosts” made:

Shorter Podcast: (audio here)

  • I am flattered in a giggly kind of way that the “hosts” underlined the dirty oven window, which I myself had somewhat sheepishly admitted was the case in the original post;
  • The “hosts” seem to enthusiastically say it’s like a scientific document with no room for error; I would challenge anyone to compare the blog post against the recipe and say that the two are identical. 🙂
  • For the record: I did not lick the spoon. 🙂
  • The “hosts” spoke of how much care I took by freezing them … well, I will go into the “easy” column and say both that baking a half batch or a double batch is roughly as easy as a standard batch, and, that I often try to make recipes that are good for the freezer!
  • And finally … the “hosts”, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, pretty much suggested that I make a blog post on making the morning coffee, which I may just do sometimes in the future. 🙂

Longer Podcast: (audio here)

  • The “hosts” asked what does “easy” mean in my claim that the muffins are easy to make, such as is it the number of ingredients, the technique, or the cleanup? “They” initially conclude “Let’s find out!” “They” then go on to point out that the use of the paper liners, and the reuse of the measuring cup used to measure out the yoghurt to then measure out the oil without cleaning it in between, as examples of the “easy” part.
  • The “hosts” seem to insinuate at a couple of points that the amounts of sugar and oil used are “generous”, while of course continuing to state that the muffins’ crumb would no doubt be rather moist as a result; yet, when discussing the presence of the yoghurt, the “hosts” wondered whether the yoghurt muffins were just an alternative to the bran muffins I make for my mom, but ultimately seemed to decide that it was obviously a “health angle”. I perceived this as a lack of continuity in the “creation” of the podcast. And to be clear, having adopted this recipe was simply meant to be an alternative to the bran muffins I give to my mom, which is clearly stated at the beginning of the post; further, I am not trying to “match” the sweetness of bran muffins.
  • The “hosts” say that the kind of yoghurt I use is not identified, ie. firm yoghurt, stirred yoghurt, or greek yoghurt, etc.; “they” are correct that the tub does not say so, at least in the view in the picture. However, “they” do read into it by saying that this lack of information is part of the “easy” claim by letting people trying the recipe to use what they have on hand. Also, “they” did not pick up on the strawberry on the tub as an example of how the “relatively plain” was intentionally a loose interpretation.
  • The “hosts” say that the kind of oil I used was not identified; again, the photo of the jug plainly says “vegetable oil”, which should tell all bakers that it’s generic vegetable-based cooking oil.

Is this a fun tool? Sure. My brother and I have bandied about ideas — purely in the hypothetical — about using the tool to create large numbers of podcasts that could then be syndicated to AM radio stations for the overnight slot during which a lot of content is often recycled or of what we consider to be of dubious interest.

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Google Maps seems to need to learn that some streets go East AND West

I think that Google Maps is overlooking a basic function: In the real world, people sometimes go east, and sometimes go west.

Yesterday for the third time in a couple of years I relied upon Google Maps for directions and was sent to the wrong place. Caveat Emptor strikes again.

In Montreal, east-west streets which bisect St. Laurent Boulevard (which, no surprise, goes sort of north-south), start their numbering in both east and west directions from there. Hence you can have two equally valid addresses on a given street, given the proviso that one is designated as “East” and the other “West”. (Hey! It’s Captain Obvious!)

Fortunately, the address I was looking for was 151; during an hour of going around the neighbourhood looking for parking around “151 Laurier” (East as proposed by Google Maps), I found out that that address wasn’t a dépanneur that sells a huge variety of microbrewery beers, and looked like it never was, and finally decided to go further down the street looking for similar businesses. I suddenly had a V-8 moment and realized “Ooops what about 151 Laurier WEST?” I high-tailed it in the opposite direction and found the business in question. And to my disappointment, they were out of the particular beer I was seeking — Weizenbock, by La Brasserie Les Trois Mousquetaires, which has replaced my previous definition of ambrosia, Trois Pistoles by Unibroue.

Twice before I have had similar experiences:

About a year ago, while in Western Canada in completely unfamiliar territory on a business trip, I had looked up a client’s address, and not knowing about any local east/west splits that addresses on the Trans-Canada Highway may have in that locality, I tried to find the address, on the east end of town, that Google Maps had provided; I was about 45 minutes late by the time I finally managed to suspect that my client’s address was a “West” address and got there.

And just to quash any participant in the Peanut Gallery out there about to say “Aha well when using Google Maps you should know that in such cases they’ll always send you to the East address, so be sure to always check both!” a couple of years ago I had looked up a local address for client, and Google sent me to Gouin Boulevard West here in Montreal, a solid 45 minute drive away from my client’s Gouin Boulevard East address.

Now the Peanut Gallery may have a point: In the real world, people sometimes go east, and sometimes go west. And when it comes to using a free online service, you get what you paid for. As such, when looking up an address on any online service, one should notice “Hmmm this is an east-west street which may bisect such and such a street and as such have East addresses and West addresses; I should specify both east and west in my address search.”

But I wonder how many other people place enough faith in Google that under such circumstances — such as when they don’t know that there’s an East and West of a given street — they would reasonably expect in the case that a street has valid East addresses and valid West addresses (and likewise for North and South addresses) that Google’s response page would come back with “Did you mean (A) 151 Laurier East, or did you mean (B) 151 Laurier West?” Certainly Google seems good enough at asking such a question when you slightly misspell a street or city name, or decides that it doesn’t recognize the address you supply and provide you with half a dozen options, as often spread across the country as spread across the city.

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The new Google OS

Well for those of you who haven’t heard, internet darling Google announced in the past day or two that it will be releasing a new OS expected in 2010 (here’s my archive).

I had a few reactions:

– Google getting headline news should make it interesting, and they have the money and clout to be a real competitor. I saw the news about the new Google OS by watching the morning news and one of the taglines was “Google to launch operating system”. Sorry, Ubuntu only gets headline news within the likes of gearheads like me (see below), and it’s a footnote at best when people talk about that South African Space Tourist.
– What will “it” be? Linux? Google-Hurd? Open-source? GPL? BSD-licence? Apache Licence?
– I wondered what it would be about. Goobuntu? Ahhh, it’ll be an internet-centric linux distro — meaning, even though it’s obvious that it’s meant to be a MS-killer on the netbooks (with the possibility that it could be released, with appropriate changes, for the desktop too), its main comparison will be gOS. (Insert tongue firmly in cheek here. Then bite.)
– It’ll only have any way of working if it A) deals with the problems Fedora has out of the box (flash, mp3, avi, DVD, etc.) by no doubt including such support out of the box, and generally be AS GOOD POINT FOR POINT as MS, and then some, and B) do something better than MS — and be something that people want.
– It’ll have to likely change the computing paradigm. The cloud computing paradigm has been touted for about seven years or more now and has only been taking off in the past year or so. Google has been slowly eroding MS with things like gmail and google docs, alongside Firefox and OpenOffice.org, and generally contributing to opensource and other projects, but I’m wondering when the breakpoint will be when suddenly EVERYBODY drops MS and goes somewhere else, or rather the pie becomes properly split up such that what’s under the hood matters less than what goes on on the screen. Oh, and people don’t like change. Resistance to change is one of Open Source’s, no scratch that, “any alternative to MS”‘s biggest enemies.
– My original take on the above was that Google *would* be the people able to push things beyond the breakpoint.
– I’m wondering if it will have to go on par with MS by pulling a Novell to integrate MS-files nicely.
– Ahh, “machines with it will be sold starting in 2010” — it was but also wasn’t as specific as that … will there be a slice in it for Google? Or will there given away the way other distros are, but have insidious settings that encourage the user without realizing it to go to some web page that has google click ads? Or … what’s in it for them?

Then of course, I’m listening to one of these “deal to the lowest common denominator then add 2 points of intelligence” syndicated talk radio hosts who’s got a guest talking about this subject. To set the stage, the previous topic he discussed was a videoclip on YouTube of a person using both hands to shave his head while driving and whether there should be a law against such a thing, which he caps up with the likes of “there should be an anti-moronification law against such morons.”

To be fair, the stance he and his guest take is targeted at most people who inexplicably (to me, anyway) have no clue that there *is* an (easy) alternative to MS on the PC, besides the Mac, which he rightfully puts in a class of its own. And, Linux *is* mentioned as an available alternative, but “it’s pretty much for the gearheads”.

Here’s what I sent him, I was so riled up:

*****

Forget Ontario hair-shaving idiots making the roads less safe, I wonder about those on the radio who say linux is for “gearheads”.

I suppose I’m a gearhead, I do indeed like computers for their own sake beyond the day to day usefulness they present.

However I’ve been using various versions of linux for the past several years on my PC and take great pleasure in overwriting any existing MS format on any new computer I get — over the past three years, that’s about 5 computers, formatted a few times over on some. Some are older and more archaic than the netbooks your piece mentioned, let alone today’s top of the line desktops, and I’ve been using them for desktop uses, not server applications. On them are full OS’s that are not stripped down — unless, of course, I were to have chosen one of the minimalist versions — and interestingly are not all that slow.

There are several versions which are geared toward the “average” user. Most of the more common versions can do all of the day to day uses that were mentioned in your piece and are on par with — sometimes superior to — MS. I use a version that is a cross between the “gearhead” market and day to day usage. I recommend to newcomers Ubuntu, which I do not use. Virtually all users of MS however would be able to use Ubuntu, available at ubuntu.com, with no difficulty, and it is the most popular of the linux versions and is not aimed at the “gearheads”.

I was incredulous listening to the show to hear that people still think that MS is the only option for their PCs. I suppose that the few who have heard of linux figure that something given away for free is worth the money paid for it. Au contraire, MS is less configurable and as you know virus prone as compared to linux; for the virus part, you have to pay more to get properly protected. Linux on the other hand is safer, faster, and free compared to MS.

I found your guest informative but I found the bias toward linux not being a competitive alternative on the desktop — which it has been for years — compared to Windows “very interesting”.

*****

Oh, I do think that the driver in Ontario is a complete moron. 🙂

And Mr. Shuttleworth, please note that I *will* recommend Ubuntu to the general public since the learning curve is easier than even Fedora’s.