A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally. – The New York Times:

Johnson has been thinking all along about ways that historians and other authors could make money through the app. In our conversation in Mountain View, he put forward a possible new revenue stream: What if e-books of history came enhanced with a NotebookLM-like interface?

Imagine, he went on, that “there’s a linear version of the story with chapters,” but then the primary materials the author used to write the book also come bundled with it. That way, “instead of just a bibliography, you have a live collection of all the original sources” for a chatbot to explore: delivering timelines, “mind maps,” explanations of key themes, anything you can think to ask.

The article linked (via a gift link) opens by discussing how historians are using LLM’s and Chatbots to support they way that they interrogate texts and manage the process of writing new books and essays. It’s pretty standard stuff.

But at the end of the article comes a suggestion of a new way of sharing their work – a new form of “book” if you will.

When movies started to be made, they were effectively a filmed version of a theatrical production. A camera focused on a stage – essentially recreating the experience of theater-goer but with cinema. It took a while but eventually film makers learned that the new medium let them do new things – and a new art form took shape.

When digital books started to become available, people suggested that the same thing might happen – but for the most part it hasn’t. Right now digital books are essentially the same experience of reading a book but on a screen. People haven’t really experimented with what might be possible. (That’s not true with the hyper-text of the web, there’s been a great deal of experimentation there.)

So what might be possible if we thought of Chatbots as a tool for more effective, or at least a different mode, of sharing ideas. That’s a question I’ve not seen asked before, and I want to think about that a bit.