Generative AI may be both the most useful and the most mystifying tool of our modern-tech era.

The problem—aside from all the endlessly documented issues around accuracy—is that generative AI generally seems to function in a DOS-like blank prompt form. The onus is squarely on you to figure out what to ask and how to put these saucy systems to use.

That black-box feeling is especially apparent when you look at NotebookLM, an “AI-first notebook” launched by Google nearly two years ago. The idea behind NotebookLM is that you upload your own source materials within carefully confined notebooks, and you can then lean on Google’s Gemini AI to interact with that material in all sorts of illuminating ways.

Since each notebook is limited only to whatever source materials you supply, the prevalence of those pesky hallucinations seems to be less of an issue. And since everything within your NotebookLM notebooks is kept completely private—not even used for any manner of AI model training, according to Google—you can connect it to all sorts of subjects and use it to gain a level of deep insight that was never before so easily accessible.

But again, there’s the black box challenge. When you first pull up NotebookLM, it’s tough to know where to begin and how to interact with the thing in practical, approachable ways. Even as someone who writes about technology for a living and has spent more time than most mortals thinking about this service, I realized I hadn’t entirely figured out how to use it in a way that would genuinely be helpful in my day-to-day life.

So I challenged myself to dig deep, get beyond all the conceptual excitement, and come up with a series of real-world use cases for NotebookLM that any regular human could both appreciate and emulate. I’ve got 15 super-specific scenarios, all tried and tested, in which the artificial intelligence answer machine could be useful for you.

Follow this road map and see which path holds the most promise from your perspective.

© Fast Company