NotebookLM: I’ve been boosting my ego with a sycophant AI and it can’t be healthy

Many people are scared that artificial intelligences may one day rise up and kill humanity, but after losing hours playing around with a digital ego-booster, I’m instead beginning to worry about the machines being a bit too nice to us.

This all began with a recommendation from journalist Max Read, in his excellent newsletter Read Max, to check out Google’s NotebookLM tool. Launched last year, Google bills NotebookLM as an AI-powered research assistant, allowing you to upload documents and have the AI sift through them for…