Author: IBL News

IBL News | New York

NotebookLM introduced two new interactive, personalized AI features for active learning engagement and study guide: flashcards and quizzes. These features are grounded in users’ source documents such as lecture notes, research papers, or work reports.

The tools can generate detailed overviews and are primarily used for preparing exams, starting new projects, or exploring new interests.

Defined as an AI partner for research and thinking, NotebookLM aims to help users understand complex material more efficiently. It seeks to enable users to turn information into high-quality, knowledgeable, and tailored briefing documents, reports, study guides, glossaries, and explainers.

• The redesigned reports now include a new Blog Post format.

• A new “Learning Guide” helps break down problems step-by-step and adapts explanations, building a deeper understanding of the subject. “Learning Guide is like having a personal tutor for users who source directly within NotebookLM,” said Google.

• New ready-to-use interactive Notebooks curated with free textbooks on these subjects: Biology, AP® Biology, Introduction to Business, Chemistry, Psychology, and Principles of Management.

• Audio Overviews help learners understand material on the go. For example, the Debate format allows for exploring two sides of a topic before a class discussion. The new formats include:

     -Brief: A single AI host delivers a short summary of your sources’ core ideas.

     -Critique: Two AI hosts review your material, offering constructive feedback on an essay or design document.

     -Debate: Two AI hosts discuss different perspectives on the topics in your sources.

Educators can create Notebooks from their class materials and assign them directly in Canvas LMS and PowerSchool Schoology Learning using Gemini LTI.

In the coming weeks, educators will also be able to create and assign notebooks in Google Classroom.

IBL News | New York

As part of its General Assembly last week, the United Nations (UN) announced a plan to establish a global forum for discussing AI governance, aiming to gather ideas and best practices.

The UN plans to form a 40-member panel of scientific experts to synthesize and analyze the research on AI risks and opportunities.

The UN follows the pattern of previous similar efforts on climate change and nuclear policy.

To launch the initiative, dozens of U.N. member nations, along with tech companies, academics, and nonprofits, spent last week summarizing their hopes and concerns about AI.

This program is an effort to ensure that control of the AI is not left in the hands of a few tech companies and countries, as the United States and China.

The UN highlighted its hope that AI can cure diseases, expand food production, and accelerate learning.

It also identified risks, including mass surveillance, the spread of misinformation, the depletion of energy resources, and widening income gaps among individuals and nations.