Melville and AI

[Nicktalop]

Dear Ishmailites,

As you may have noticed in my last two posts or replies, I’ve attempted to feed the content of some these threads into a Google’s AI tool named NotebookLM. This AI helps you analyze diverse sources (texts, PDFs, URLs), question them and ultimately produce a short podcast (audio file).

I am very grateful for all your clever and enlightening conversations about Melville and Moby-Dick, which have immensely enriched my understanding of his work.

Here we have a new technology which may complement our common efforts to unravel the mysteries of his art.

May this group live for another century.

Nick

[Hardeman]

Nick,

Thank you for the introduction of NotebookLM. Having tested the AI sites ChatGPT and Gemini using Cervantes Don Quixote, I found them to be unable to even quote the texts accurately and to contradict the text's conclusions.

In the examples you posted on NotebookLM  it appears at this stage to make trustworthy quotes and to organize the conceptions with some sense of creative meaning.  Not surprisingly, I felt some satisfaction that a word manipulating program could appear to resonate with my words in a meaningful way without the feeling component that justifies human communication. I will enjoy playing and testing this new AI

For those who hold Moby Dick as our National Epic about a leader projecting his internal conflicts on an external scapegoat, we are now living in that reality. Moby Dick has never been more relevant.

I took wish this group may live on.

Hardeman