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AI makes you more creative, AI Roundtable with Steven Johnson and Grant Lee | E2231

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Jan 8, 2026

Steven Johnson, an editorial director at NotebookLM and bestselling author, joins Grant Lee, CEO of Gamma, to explore how AI enhances creativity rather than stifles it. They discuss using AI to streamline workflows, allowing more focus on insightful work. Johnson shares how AI aids in uncovering customer insights through large language models, while Lee emphasizes modernizing presentations and eliminating tedious formatting. Together, they argue that AI amplifies brainstorming and can unlock new ideas in product development and storytelling.

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INSIGHT

Context Engineering Unlocks Real Power

NotebookLM emphasizes context engineering: load your sources so models give grounded, citeable answers.
That grounding lets knowledge workers query their own documents like a personalized assistant.

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ANECDOTE

Old Idea Turned Into Long Essay Fast

Steven found an old story sketch and used NotebookLM to run deep research and synthesize sources quickly.
He turned that into a 13,000-word piece in spare time that would've taken months previously.

volunteer_activism

ADVICE

Turn Chat Logs Into Product Insight

Export your user chats and load them into an LLM to build personas and extract value propositions.
Use those personas to test which features will actually move the needle for each user group.

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What is Gamma and Why It Was Built

02:20 • 5min

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NotebookLM: Context Engineering and Sources

07:05 • 3min

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Real Use Cases: Notebooks for Teams and VCs

10:12 • 2min

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Gamma's Workflow: From Slack to Personas

12:37 • 6min

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How Gamma Simplifies Visual Storytelling

18:34 • 3min

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How AI Changes Org Roles and Hiring

21:05 • 2min

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Using NotebookLM for User Research

22:54 • 2min

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Is AI Reproducing Consciousness?

24:50 • 2min

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AI as an Amplifier for Brainstorming

Group Chats as Modern Coffee Shops

31:43 • 59sec

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Creative Resistance to AI and Counterarguments

32:42 • 5min

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How Creatives Use AI for Jokes and Riffs

37:31 • 2min

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Public Perception: Surveys on AI and Creativity

39:50 • 11min

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Does ChatGPT Make You Dumber? Study Critique

50:32 • 2min

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AI in Education: Opportunity and Assessment Challenges

52:40 • 4min

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Jevons Paradox and Job Creation

56:33 • 2min

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Optimism About AI's Economic Impact

• Mentioned in 58 episodes

Superforecasting

The Art and Science of Prediction

Dan Gardner

Philip E. Tetlock

Santiago Foz (argentino)

In this book, Tetlock and Gardner present the results of the Good Judgment Project, a massive forecasting tournament that identified a small group of 'superforecasters' who are exceptionally good at predicting future events. The authors explain that good forecasting does not require powerful computers or arcane methods but involves gathering evidence from various sources, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course. The book uses stories of forecasting successes and failures, as well as interviews with high-level decision makers, to illustrate these principles and demonstrate how anyone can improve their forecasting abilities.

#13

• Mentioned in 387 episodes

Sapiens

A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

This book surveys the history of humankind from the Stone Age to the 21st century, focusing on Homo sapiens. It divides human history into four major parts: the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Unification of Humankind, and the Scientific Revolution. Harari argues that Homo sapiens dominate the world due to their unique ability to cooperate in large numbers through beliefs in imagined realities such as gods, nations, money, and human rights. The book also examines the impact of human activities on the global ecosystem and speculates on the future of humanity, including the potential for genetic engineering and non-organic life.

#7649

• Mentioned in 6 episodes

How We Got to Now

Six Innovations That Made The Modern World

Steven Johnson

In this book, Steven Johnson examines the history of innovation, highlighting six key innovations that have shaped the modern world. He delves into unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields, such as how air-conditioning enabled massive migrations to cities, how pendulum clocks triggered the industrial revolution, and how clean water facilitated the manufacture of computer chips. The book is accompanied by a six-part television series on PBS and is written in Johnson's engaging and informative style.

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

Gusto - https://www.gusto.com/twist

Lemon IO - https://lemon.io/twist

Quo - http://quo.com/TWiST

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:

(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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