Research on Steroids | How NotebookLM is a Game Changer for Ministry
Discover a powerful tool that can augment the impact of your ministry
Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini are transforming how people are discovering new information. In the old days, if you wanted to research a topic, you’d go to Google’s website and enter in a bunch of relevant keywords in the search bar. If you were lucky, out of the top 10 results, maybe one or two were relevant to what you were searching for. From there, you’d have to click on the link and go visit the relevant website to find out if it contained the information you were looking for.
Searching for information via a traditional search engine is time consuming and tedious compared to using one of the leading LLMs. Enter the same keywords you used to use with a search engine into an LLM and you’ll get very different results. Most of the time, the LLM will be able to guess your intention, read between the lines of what you didn’t say, and then return relevant results to your query.
Normally, this would be considered a good and successful way to gain access to the information you need. Unfortunately, LLMs suffer from a major problem that has not disappeared despite enormous efforts by leading LLM companies. LLMs are prone to hallucinations. I’ve written about this previously. The LLM will confidently respond to your queries while often using information sources of dubious quality.
If the information you are seeking is just to satisfy your curiosity, no big deal. Where the trouble starts is when you are intending to use this information for something more serious like a sermon, a book you are working on, or an academic paper. In each of these use cases, the quality of the sources matter a great deal.
How to eliminate LLM hallucinations for mission critical tasks
You are no doubt like me and most ministry leaders. Your time is precious and you don’t have time to spend painstakingly verifying each source that the LLM has spit out at you. What if I told you that there was a way for you to use AI to search your sources while greatly reducing, even eliminating hallucinations?
Enter Google’s NotebookLM.
Google has created an AI tool, NotebookLM, that is a dream for research. Anyone needing to deep-dive into distilling large amounts of information for research purposes will find NotebookLM a game-changer.
NotebookLM allows you to upload your sources to a notebook you create and then search against those sources using the power of AI. On the free plan, you can upload up to 50 sources into a notebook. If you have a Google AI Pro account, you can upload up to 300 sources to one notebook. The ultra plan allows up to 600 sources.
Sources can include PDFs, PowerPoint files, Word files, images, public website URLs, YouTube URLs, Google Workspace files, various audio files, and manually pasted text snippets.
One you’ve uploaded all your sources, you can then do a number of things with them including:
Run queries against the sources. The query will then let you know which sources have produced the results.
You can search the internet for more sources.
You can do deep research based on a specific prompt you provide that can lead to more sources.
In the main Notebook chat window, you can now ask any question you want of your sources and it will help you sift through the information while letting you know which sources it used for its answer.
Gain New Superpowers!
Being able to prompt access to your custom sources is certainly a game changer but NotebookLM does so much more!
Audio Overview: You can generate an audio overview complete with a custom prompt to focus the overview specifically on exactly what type of information you are looking to extract from your sources. Two AI personalities will discuss the content and offer their perspectives. Besides this back and forth, you can also interrupt their conversation and ask clarifying questions and these AI people will respond to your question, then keep going.
Video Overview: Create explainer videos via AI according to your instructions that can help you better understand the source material and even to present it to others.
Mind Map: Generate a mind map based on your provided sources.
Reports: Create custom reports based on your sources, choose from three preset reports including a Briefing Doc that gives an overview and key insights from your sources, a Study Guide that creates a short-answer quiz, suggested essay questions, and a glossary of terms based on your custom instructions, and a Blog Post with insightful takeaways distilled into a highly readable article. Besides these reports, the AI will suggest other report formats based on what is appropriate for the sources you have provided.
Flashcards: Generate AI flashcards based on your sources. Like most of these other Studio options, you can customize the information generated into flashcards.
Quiz: Generate an AI interactive quiz based on your sources.
Infographic: Generate an infographic based on your sources and your custom instructions.
Slide Deck: Generate an AI slide deck based on your sources and custom instructions.
How Does NotebookLM Help Church Leaders?
There are a number of use-cases for NotebookLM. The obvious one is for study. You can use AI to give you answers and in the process, make you intellectually lazy. Or, you can use AI to help you drill down into the information and extract insights that would be very difficult to get otherwise. This second option is where I believe NotebookLM can really shine.
Preparing for Meetings: Ahead of key meetings, create a Notebook, load relevant source files into the Notebook, then generate reports, slide decks, infographics, even an explainer video or two. Then use this information to help your people digest complicated decisions or a new strategic direction. In the past, doing this kind of work would have either taken a person hundreds of hours or required a team of people working all week. Now, using NotebookLM, you can produce professional results in a couple of hours of focused work.
Researching a Sermon: Load relevant sources into a notebook and then query the sources to help you understand the information from different angles. Challenge the information and ask it to explain itself. Generate an audio preview and listen to the AI discuss the overview of the sources. Deepen your understanding of complex topics and learn how to distill it into bite sized chunks of knowledge that will be more easily understood and absorbed by your congregation.
Writing a Book: Writing a book can be a daunting task. Good books stretch the writer. Most books require research. A successful book is one that challenges the reader to view a topic from a fresh perspective or angle. Using NotebookLM, you will be able to dissect and analyze hundreds of sources to help you get maximum insight and impact on large bodies of knowledge. The AI can help you approach the information from different angles and help you challenge your own arguments to help you make sure your approach is sound and well formed.
Get Advanced Degrees: NotebookLM shines for use in academic environments. Mastery of any given topic is usually only as good as the information you access. Taking time to load a notebook with quality sources is the first step. Once this is done, you can use NotebookLM to create quizzes, flashcards, reports and more. Using this tool is like digging a hole with a hydraulic excavator instead of a simple shovel. Will the shovel work? Sure, but it will take 1,000 times longer to dig a hole compared to a big, powerful excavator.
Worth the Price of Google AI Pro Alone!
NotebookLM is so useful and powerful that I would gladly pay the $26.99 CDN ($19.99 USD) per month for the Pro plan. Never before has the average person had access to a more powerful research tool than now.
Have access to Google Workspace? This powerful tool is included as part of that subscription!
Yes, regular LLMs can be a powerful way to sift through complex knowledge. The advantage of NotebookLM is that you control the sources and therefore the quality of information from which you are gathering your insights. Most of the information on the internet is not academic level quality. Much of it is of questionable worth.
Try NotebookLM today! I promise you that you won’t be disappointed!
Joseph Duchesne writes to help Christian Leaders navigate the ethical challenges that artificial intelligence poses to the Church today. He is the author of a couple of books, The Last Crisis and Discover the One, both available on Amazon.
Do you have any concern about all that data you put into NotebookLM ending up on Google servers? Are there any alternatives that keep your data on your system and not somewhere in the cloud?