Steven Johnson dreamed of building the ultimate research assistant. Now he's doing just that at Google, where he's the co-founder and editorial director of NotebookLM.

It's one of the most interesting AI products out there. It radically changes how we learn, research, and remember — and the "notebook" itself is becoming a standard unit of knowledge across Google, rolling out in more and more places where AI needs to reference a body of sources.

In this episode, the author of _Where Good Ideas Come From_ explains how AI is making him a better researcher and writer — and why tools like NotebookLM are so powerful when you're trying to make new connections, remember what you've already found, and figure out what's missing.

There's a lot of fear right now that AI is making us dumber. That by relying on it too much, we're engaging in "cognitive offloading" and stunting our learning. That's a real risk, especially in schools.

But Steven says we should also be talking about what you can gain from AI — and the power of something he calls "cognitive uploading."

Resources:
* Google NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/
* Steven Johnson: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/

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• (00:00) - If you are interested in truly understanding something, this is the greatest time to be alive