We've Had Our Fun with AI

While we've completed the six classes we promised in our Academy for Lifelong Learning course, we'll keep meeting on Thursday afternoons to explore the mysteries and implications of AI.

We were glad to be able to give everyone an in-depth look at NotebookLM and ChatGPT working in tandem yesterday. When we bring these distinct intelligences together, we truly achieve writing superpowers.

We talked for 90 minutes. Otter captured it all and we gave the transcript to NotebookLM. You’ll see below the prompt I gave it, representing the essence of what I wanted to communicate. In its report, NotebookLM simply elaborates.

Dan

Here’s the Report NotebookLM Generated

Introduction: A Heartfelt Thank You

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in our “Fun with AI” class! Your curiosity, insightful questions, and collaborative spirit made this series a tremendous success. A special thanks is also due to our wonderful partners with whom we collaborated in observing the “AI Moment.”

The Friends of the Saratoga Springs Public Library

The Saratoga Book Festival

The Saratoga Torch Club

The Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL)

For our final session, we took a deep dive into a powerful workflow combining NotebookLM with ChatGPT.

This post will recap that demonstration and announce some exciting new opportunities to continue our shared exploration of artificial intelligence.

1. Our Grand Finale: Exploring the Distinct Intelligences of AI

To showcase the power of NotebookLM in reporting on our conversation, I’ve asked it to generate a detailed summary of our session. Here is what it produced:

Our final session pivoted to a hands-on demonstration, following a real-world project brought to us by participant Mike. His goal was to create a compelling narrative about the past, present, and future (specifically the next 5-10 years) of public transportation in Saratoga Springs and Saratoga County.

To tackle this project, Dan Forbush walked the group through a dynamic, multi-step workflow, showcasing how to strategically move between AI tools based on their unique strengths:

• Step 1: Discovery with ChatGPT. The demonstration began in ChatGPT, leveraging its broad, web-scouring ability for initial discovery. Dan and Mike collaboratively crafted a “Deep Research” prompt to gather a wide range of source material. The tool immediately acted as a research partner, asking clarifying questions—such as whether to focus on fixed-route buses or include rideshares, and whether to analyze ridership trends or infrastructure investment—to sharpen the focus and improve the quality of the results.

• Step 2: Organization with Basecamp. Project documents, including the initial research from ChatGPT, were organized in Basecamp. A key feature demonstrated was the ability to generate public links for documents, making them easily shareable with other tools.

• Step 3: Grounded Synthesis with NotebookLM. With a wealth of information gathered, the project moved to NotebookLM. This was a crucial shift, chosen because NotebookLM excels at analyzing a constrained set of user-provided sources. By uploading the detailed research from ChatGPT and a timeline document shared via a public link from Basecamp, we created a single, trustworthy resource. This ensured all subsequent output would be factually grounded in the project’s specific materials.

• Step 4: Creation and Polished Refinement. Working within NotebookLM’s source-grounded environment, Dan prompted it to generate a detailed outline for a 15-minute presentation. In a move that highlighted the core lesson of the day, this structured outline was then taken back to ChatGPT. We leveraged its distinct intelligence for generating polished, presentation-ready prose. ChatGPT then generated a slide-by-slide script and, when prompted for an export, created a downloadable file with the text structured for a presentation, including labeled placeholders where the user could manually insert the suggested images.

This strategic back-and-forth powerfully demonstrated the “distinct intelligences” of the tools: using ChatGPT for its expansive creative and research power, and NotebookLM for its focused, source-grounded synthesis.

2. The Learning Continues: An Invitation to Our AI Civic Conversation

Although our official ALL class has concluded, the conversation is far from over! A group of us will continue to meet regularly to explore the practical applications and societal implications of artificial intelligence. If you’re interested in continuing the journey, you are warmly invited to join us.

• What: An ongoing Civic Conversation about Artificial Intelligence

• When: Thursday, November 20

• Time: 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

We’ll provide a new Zoom link when we announce our anticipated show contents.

3. Looking Ahead: Introducing Saratoga 2045

Building on the themes of community and future planning that emerged in our class, we are also launching a new series of conversations called Saratoga 2045. This initiative invites Saratogians to join conversations about the future of our community as we navigate significant growth and change. Fittingly, a key data point that surfaced during our AI-powered research for the public transportation project was the projection that Saratoga County’s population will grow from 240,000 to 300,000 by the year 2045.

4. Conclusion: Join the Exploration

We look forward to continuing this journey of understanding and using AI to enrich our work, our projects, and our community. We hope you will join us for our upcoming Civic Conversation and help shape the dialogue for the years to come.