Posts on Centertao.org can be dense to read, so I’ve used Google’s NotebookLM Deep Dive ‘Podcast’ feature to turn some, or perhaps many, of them into easily understood overviews.
Understandably, artificial intelligence often fails to grasp the deeper aspects. Being generated by a LLM (large language model), it only skims the surface. It also throws in modern day banal platitudes, and sometimes veers way, way off track. Nevertheless, it serves well for a basic understanding, or at least offers a taste of the subject at hand. For a truly accurate deep dive, study the associated source essay.
Below are links to Deep Dive ‘Podcasts’ of selected essays in these categories. (NOTE: This is a work in progress. Right now, only Who Are You Series and Postscript Series have their ‘Podcasts’. The Autobiographical and Observational essays are partially done.
I’ve also testing out how well the NotebookLM AI works on my Reflections on the Tao Te Ching chapters ( A Word for Word Translation with Commentary ). Results were very disappointing. It seems that the more of the actual Tao Te Ching content there is, the worse the results. That’s not surprising considering that AI’s LLM is drawn from a society wide view of life, which often runs counter to a Taoist view, as chapter 40 hints, In the opposite direction, of the way moves.
I suppose it does better on my general essays because I normally only use quotes from the Tao Te Ching to bridge the gap between the society wide view of life and the Taoist view. Even then, it easily gets it wrong. I asked ChatGPT about this and it said, “AI models are trained on vast amounts of text data, which inevitably reflects the norms, biases, and “banalities” of society. This means that responses can sometimes echo mainstream or surface-level perspectives unless specifically prompted to dive deeper”. Well that’s a fact. Yet, even when I prompt it to dive deeper, it still can’t manage a Taoist point of view… naturally! Still, I think the AI ‘podcasts’ can offer useful overviews as long as one remembers that they are usually only scratching the surface.