In this premier of the Talking with machines podcast, I’m joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes. Inspired by Bryan’s recent post “Some notes on how culture is responding to generative AI”, we discuss this horizon scan where Bryan asks, “How are we responding to AI through stories, art, religion, relationships, media, and symbols?” Link: https://aiandacademia.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-how-culture-is-responding More from Bryan: https://bryanalexander.org/ Tom Haymes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/ Mark Corbett Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

The Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) is an accredited alternative graduate school in Berkeley, California. I created a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) using Google’s NotebookLM to collect dozens of documents and ‘chat’ about “The WISR Way” - WISR’s personalized learning method based on on the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. I generated this podcast using NotebookLM’s podcast generator, edited all the places the ‘hosts’ mispronounced ‘WISR’ and added an introduction.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

Join Mark and Joe Lambert, co-founder and director of StoryCenter.org, innovators in digital storytelling (formerly the Center for Digital Storytelling). They have been leading digital storytelling workshops that employ storymapping (GIS) and “artificial intelligence” to explore possible futures for storytelling. And perhaps a surprise guest! We’ll be using digital technologies to tell stories about telling stories with digital technologies.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

Using Google’s NotebookLM, I added 50 eportfolio documents from my Drive. They were mostly journal articles. I included slides from a seminar I gave and a document I generated using Calude.ai. Then I used NotebookLM’s new “Audio Overview” feature to create this “podcast”. The LLM did a pretty good job of summarizing key points, but the references, especially to the slides, are made up: BS, or, bafflegab, if you prefer. Slide 37 was referenced several times. It was the end slide with the organization name and contact information. It will be a big improvement if Google adds the ability to edit the audio by editing a transcript.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

Earthquake!

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media