If academic papers could talk

Google release Illuminate

Author

Alex Debecker
September 13, 2024

Google Illuminate / google.com

Here's a fun AI use case: Illuminate by Google.

Illuminate transforms text (scientific papers, notes, etc.) into a 2-way conversation. I encourage you have a play with the handful of examples Google have released so far; the experience is mind blowing.

Google Illuminate / google.com

Is this magic? Yes, in a way. It's important to remember all this content is based on LLMs which, although magical, are often inaccurate. A user on Hacker News flagged this example:

Happens in the very first example: [Attention is All You Need - 1:07]

Voice A: How did the "Attention is All You Need" paper address this sequential processing bottleneck of RNNs?

Voice B: So, instead of going step-by-step like RNNs, they introduced a model called the Transformer - hence the title.

What title? The paper is entitled "Attention is All You Need".

vanishingbee, Hacker News user

The same user goes on to qualify the experience as "stochastic parrots cosplaying as academics.". Harsh, but accurate.

So far, all the examples published by Google revolve around AI or LLMs. Yawn.

I have applied for early access and promise to turn the world's most important scientific paper, The case of the disappearing teaspoons, into a riveting stochastic parrot podcast.