This works pretty well. I tried it with this guidance prompt:
You are both pelicans who work as data
journalist at a pelican news service.
Discuss this from the perspective of
pelican data journalists, being sure
to inject as many pelican related
anecdotes as possible
You ever find yourself wading through
mountains of data trying to pluck out
the juicy bits? It's like hunting for
a single shrimp in a whole kelp forest,
am I right?
And:
The future of data journalism is
looking brighter than a school of
silversides reflecting the morning sun.
Until next time, keep those wings
spread, those eyes sharp, and those
minds open. There's a whole ocean
of data out there just waiting to be
explored.
It’s amazing how it doesn’t occur to OpenAI and others that the “safety guardrails” really dilute the output. And it’s a display of conservatism. Bizarre to think that in America AI couldn’t swear.
Until today, where Google allowed the AI to behave as the lord intended.
Why do you think it doesn't occur to them? I'm genuinely curious.
It seems to me these alignment questions are a conscious trade-off between giving users what they ask for and brand safety knowing that every spicy output will immediately find its way to twitter/reddit/etc.
Aside from being invited to a few events (Google I/O, OpenAI DevDay twice, an upcoming Anthropic hackathon that I applied for and was accepted) I've had no compensation from any of the LLM vendors.
I've been invited to a few alpha/beta previews for all three of OpenAI/Google/Anthropic, and I've received API credits as an attendee of the DevDay events.
I write about this stuff because it's really interesting to me, and super fun to explore.
Fwiw, I'd say this falls under the guidelines "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
You can listen to the 7m40s resulting MP4 here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Oct/17/notebooklm-pelicans/
Example snippets:
And: