AI makes you more creative, AI Roundtable with Steven Johnson and Grant Lee | E2231
This Week in Startups
NotebookLM: Context Engineering and Sources
Steven outlines NotebookLM's focus on context management, grounded citations, and transformations like audio overviews and slide decks.
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
Gusto - https://www.gusto.com/twist
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Today’s show:
We keep hearing about how AI is killing our ability to think, filling our media with slop, and ruining our kids’ ability to learn. It seems the internet is filled with negative sentiment about the future AI is bringing.
Jason is joined by Grant Lee, CEO and co-founder of Gamma, as well as Steven Johnson, editorial director of NotebookLM to tackle these questions on today’s AI roundtable!
Grant and Steven break down how they are using AI to push forward their own productivity as well as their teams. Both say that AI makes you more creative! Steven points out that it helped him write his books by having AI do the “chore work” while he got to focus on the valuable insights and higher level thinking.
One valuable tip was that AI can be used to uncover customer insights in a new medium. Steven and Grant both put customer feedback into an LLM, allowed them to have high level conversations with their whole user base about what features and products they each enjoy. If that isn’t creative, then what is?
Learn about all this and more in today’s roundtable!
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introducing Steven Johnson and Grant Lee!
(10:12) Gusto: Check out the online payroll and benefits experts with software built specifically for small business and startups. Try Gusto today and get three months FREE at https://www.gusto.com/twist
(11:28) How Jason and the TWiST team uses NotebookLM
(12:37) Will AI replace lawyers in startups and VC? Should they?
(16:08) How the Gamma team uses AI understand their consumers
(19:43) Lemon.io: Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://lemon.io/twist
(22:38) How the Google team uses AI to “talk” to their whole user base.
(24:45) Is AI replicating our brains and consciousness?
(28:18) The ways that AI is changing how companies process information.
(30:39) Quo (formerly OpenPhone) gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at http://quo.com/TWiST
(31:43) Jason thinks groupchats are the modern coffee shop for interesting ideas!
(32:48) Why Steven thinks AI makes creatives MORE ORIGINAL
(40:02) HALF of US adults think AI makes you less creative
(43:20) Grant defends using AI for doing research + making business decisions
(45:28) Superforecasting — How to think about your thinking
(53:00) Is education going back to blue books and oral exams?
(56:30) Jevons Paradox and How AI will increase jobs for all!
(59:50) Edison put whale hunters out of business but brought in electricians and movie industry
(1:02:36) Jason coaches his employees to 10x themselves with AI tools to push value
(1:05:54) Jason’s call to join the AI revolution
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Thank you to our partners:
(10:12) Gusto: Check out the online payroll and benefits experts with software built specifically for small business and startups. Try Gusto today and get three months FREE at https://www.gusto.com/twist
(19:43) Lemon.io: Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://lemon.io/twist
(30:39) Quo (formerly OpenPhone) gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at http://quo.com/TWiST
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