Roast Me

Read time: 2 Minutes

When you spend time writing or building a report and are ready to submit it to a customer, or have it peer-reviewed. No one likes being told there are gaps in their work.

When you have been working on an item for so long, tunnel vision definitely can occur, and an outside perspective can be beneficial before you share it. You wonder to yourself…Maybe I missed something? Maybe I’m losing my mind? Maybe I have no idea what I’m writing about?

You might seek someone close to review your work and get their initial feedback.

It definitely feels a bit different when it comes from an AI chatbot.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you?

It made me curious though: a proper gut check from AI? How might that happen? I’m going to walk you through an example of how to use Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) and how you can use it today to improve your work.

Let’s dance.

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Water

Before we get going, I would not recommend (at any time) uploading any company-confidential data or client data, proposals, pricing, etc. that you want in an AI tool.

Ok here is my test subject; I wanted to focus on the data center development, water usage, and the growing small modular reactor markets in South Carolina. I wanted to take verified sources that are focused on these three areas to build an understanding of where the gaps are in power across the state, changes in water rights, water usage, demand for power, and where the state is looking to add more power and build potential projects.

You can see the growing demand for data centers and water usage across the US:

California’s largest AI data center project suing for access to 287 million gallons of Colorado River water, 0.03% of Imperial Valley’s supply

Texas law shields San Antonio-area data center water usage from public records requests

Wyoming tightens wastewater rules after Meta datacenter contractor flushed contaminated water

I compiled a total of twenty-four sources. A comprehensive look at how water resources in South Carolina are currently being impacted, stressed, and consumed. I had data on usage patterns, infrastructure strain, environmental pressure points, and regulatory context. By any reasonable measure, the research was thorough.

Then I ran it through Critique mode in Google Gemini Notebook. And what came back stopped me.

Not because it told me my sources were wrong. Because it told me what was missing. It flagged gaps in my data center water usage analysis I had not fully accounted for. It identified missing context around Small Modular Reactor water consumption that was material to understanding the full picture. It challenged timing assumptions I had made about public sector opportunities in both spaces. And it surfaced blind spots in where those opportunities were likely to emerge over the next twelve months.

Want to check out my Critique Notebook on this? Check it out below!

SMRs Solve South Carolina Data Center Mandates

Use the power of AI for quick summarization and note taking, Gemini Notebook is your powerful virtual research assistant rooted in information you can trust.

notebooklm.google.com/notebook/012b2e87-2301-4e0e-bc58-24c5996fd871/artifact/6a1c2f18-b5ac-4513-b826-14a2736cc72f?utm_source=nlm_web_share&utm_medium=google_oo&utm_campaign=art_share_1&utm_content=&utm_smc=nlm_web_share_google_oo_art_share_1_

Blinders

Google Gemini Notebook, formerly NotebookLM, has a feature inside its Audio Overview function called Critique mode. The default Audio Overview experience generates a podcast-style conversation between two AI hosts who explore your sources, connect ideas, and summarize themes. It is useful for synthesis and sense-making across large bodies of material.

Critique mode changes the dynamic entirely. The same two hosts show up, but instead of exploring your material, they interrogate it. They identify structural weaknesses, logical gaps, and places where your argument or research does not hold together.

It is designed to be constructive rather than harsh, but it does not pull punches. The goal is a rigorous, honest review of whatever you put in front of it.

For my South Carolina water resources research, that meant uploading twenty-four sources and asking it to do four specific things.

Evaluate the overall scope.
Identify gaps in my data center water usage analysis.
Flag missing context around Small Modular Reactor water consumption.
Surface public sector opportunity blind spots I might be tracking incorrectly or missing entirely.

What came back was not comfortable. It was useful. There is a difference, and most feedback tools optimize for the former at the expense of the latter.

Check out some of my previous articles here:

The One NotebookLM Feature That Makes Deep Research Actually Usable

The Key…in Key Account Management Transitions

Your Name is On It. Not the AIs

Sharpen

Critique is only as sharp as the instructions you give it.

Uploading your material and hitting generate without custom instructions will produce generic feedback. That is not what you want. Before you run a critique, spend five minutes writing specific instructions that tell the hosts exactly what to focus on.

The structural weaknesses you are most concerned about. The assumptions you know you made but are not sure you can defend. The audience you are writing for and what they will push back on hardest.

The more specific your instructions, the more targeted and useful the output becomes. Vague prompts produce vague critiques. Precise prompts produce the kind of feedback that reshapes how you think about your work.

Upload your documents (the more, the better) to a notebook where you have edit access, open the Studio panel, select Audio Overview, and choose Critique from the format options.

The audio processes in the background while you continue working. Once it is ready, you can adjust playback speed, listen while doing something else, and share or download the file so others on your team can hear the feedback directly.

Workflow

Critique mode is not a replacement for human judgment. It is a first line of defense that runs before human judgment enters the picture.

The most expensive feedback in any organization is the kind that arrives after something has already shipped. After the slide deck has been submitted. After the strategy has been presented to the board. After the research has informed a decision that is already in motion. At that point, feedback is no longer useful. It is damage control.

Running a critique before any significant piece of work leaves your desk changes that dynamic. It gives you the uncomfortable feedback while there is still time to act on it. It surfaces the gaps, the logical leaps, the missing context, and the unsupported assumptions before anyone else sees them.

And it does all of that without the political friction that makes honest internal feedback so rare in most organizations.

For research-heavy work, competitive analysis, proposals, strategic documents, and anything where gaps in your thinking have downstream consequences, this belongs at the end of your drafting process and before anything goes to a human reviewer.

Not because it will make you a better writer. Because it will make your work harder to challenge before it reaches the room where it matters most.

Take the most important piece of work currently sitting on your desk. A market intelligence prep for a customer. A bill review within a specific state. A strategic brief. A research scope. Anything where gaps in your thinking could create problems you do not see yet.

Upload it to Gemini Notebook. Write specific instructions that tell Critique mode exactly what to look for. Run it before you send it to anyone else.

Then sit with what comes back before you defend what you already have.

The gaps it surfaces are not an indictment of the work you did. They are the difference between the work you have right now and the work you actually need.

That difference is almost always worth finding before someone else finds it for you.

See you next week.

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