Back in the Saddle

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~ Pete Smith ~ 1 Comment

When I hit Publish on my last post here, I had NO intention of letting the blog lay dormant for over two months but, y’know, life is full of surprises. Moving to our new apartment and then unpacking and putting things to rights took far more time and energy than I’d anticipated and once we were finally “done” (in quotes because honestly we’ve still got things that haven’t been unpacked) I gave myself some time to rest and recover, and in the midst of that I sank deep back into my gaming habit.

But finally the brain cells are ready to maybe do something a little more interesting and a little more thoughtful. We’re easing back into things!

I haven’t been doing much experimenting with AI for the past few months so I’m woefully behind. Mind you I USE AI constantly, but futzing around with running local models and such has fallen by the wayside and I’ve cut down on the amount of AI news I consume. There’s just SO much of it. One of the YouTube channels I do still watch puts out a video with an average of three new announcements almost every day. Crazy how fast things are moving.

I’m still working, now and then, on the little game picker app I vibe coded a while back. I now have it hosted online and with a database to store my game library and the ability to add more users if I wanted. I have a few more tweaks for it. That one is built in Google’s Antigravity ‘vibe-coding’ app.

With my Codecademy subscription running out I didn’t bother to go back to my Python course. The nice thing about being a senior citizen is knowing that you’re probably never going to use any of this knowledge for anything but your own enjoyment so switching tracks isn’t an issue. The vibe-coded Game Picker is done in Typescript, which I’ve never touched, so I decided to learn a little about that.

Instead of signing up for a course somewhere, I created a custom ChatGPT to be an instructor and that turned our really well. The trick was in giving it clear instructions that it should be mentoring and teaching and not giving full answers unless specifically asked for one. I really just started using it so maybe it’ll collapse later on but I learned a lot about setting things up and what all the various files are for. Granted, simple stuff but all stuff I didn’t know because I R NOOB. And as promised the instructor asked me questions, asked me to predict what would happen before I ran code, and things like that. It felt personal and effective and so far, at least, I am VERY pleased. I do pay for Chat GPT so I can’t say it is “free” but it is free in that way that you’re paying for a service anyway and you find a new perk that doesn’t add to the cost.

Anyway that’s it for today. Just thought that writing a post would help with getting motivated. I watched a video the other night (YouTube is my therapist) that said waiting for inspiration is the wrong way to make progress. Instead you just have to start doing and that in turn will LEAD to inspiration. So I guess that’s what I’m doing.

Can AI help those who suffer from memory loss?

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~ Pete Smith ~ 1 Comment

I was watching something on TV the other day and the characters were talking to someone with Alzheimer’s disease. Now this was NOT a documentary, and I am certainly not a doctor. I have had a few brief encounters with people suffering from cognitive decline and I found that experience unsettling, to say the least. Trying to tease from a lost elderly gentleman what his name was and where he lived when he had no clue…he was so frightened. My heart just about broke and since then losing my memory and sense of self has been one of my greatest worries, more so since I’ve officially become a senior citizen.

It occured to me that if I were ever to face cognitive decline that a specialized AI Chatbot might be really handy. I’m not talking about using ChatGPT but a smaller model that is trained specifically for the patient. Imagine that you or your loved ones could feed it a ton of facts about yourself, including pictures and names of people near and dear to you. It would have facts about you too.

Let’s be clear, this is all just my own personal speculation of what AI could do to help folk with memory issues. And it would not be a substitute for professional human care, just something extra for when the patient is alone.

The device would ‘live’ in something wearable like a locket, glasses, or a watch. It would act autonomously throughout the day, gently reminding you about things. If it was hooked up to a camera it could identify people you know and quietly whisper to you what their name is and what relationship they have to you.

When you’re alone it would keep you company, addressing you by your name, talking about what day it is, and where you are. What you need to do in that day, or what project you’ve been working on. Just little hints to help maintain some continuity in your life.

Basically it would be a patient companion as well as a back-up memory device. Something that is always there to help you and answer questions any time things started to get foggy.

Your chatbot could remind you to take medicines, remind you to eat. When to go to bed. Help you maintain your routine which, I’ve been told, makes life with memory loss a little easier to deal with.

I feel like this kind of device could be designed today, and within a few years it could be built into some kind of robot companion. There are AI toys demonstrating early versions of this idea already: imagine a hybrid between a Furby & a tamagotchi. You raise them and talk to them and they remember facts about you and are supposed to provide companionship. These are just toys, mind you, but they show at least a hint of the kinds of interactions that an AI with persistent long-term memory of you and your life can provide.

I’m imagining something like these toys only (of course) brought up to a much higher level of competency and ready to have adult conversations. There’s also going to have to be a lot of testing to ensure that appropriate guardrails are in place to keep them being helpful rather than distracting. Also of course privacy concerns, though I believe that most of the personal data would be stored locally.

Here in the US the population is aging. Anything that can help older people stay independent longer seems like a smart investment because it seems like there just isn’t going to be enough care to go around. This feels like one place that AI could really help improve a person’s quality of life.

Gemini 3 Builds Me An App

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~ Pete Smith ~ 4 Comments

Google’s Gemini 3 rolled out today and I got an email inviting me to try it. I clicked through and stared at the empty prompt box. What should I do? There’s an “I feel lucky” button and I clicked that and got a prompt to build some boring business app. But at least then I knew it wanted to build me something. I was at work so couldn’t spend a lot of time so just spewed out this prompt:

Build an app that I can use to track my gaming and that helps me to decide what to play next. It should also track what platform (PC, Xbox, Playstation) a game is on and should pick at least one Xbox and one PC app every day so I can earn Microsoft Rewards points. Once those conditions are met it should weight game choice based on how long it has been since I played that game (the longer it has been since I played, the more likely it gets picked). Also there should be a field for games with daily login rewards so I make sure to get those every day.

This is an interation on another (Python) app that I vibe-coded with ChatGPT. But I was just playing around, testing stuff.

I hit submit and then my boss pinged me on Teams so I switched over to my work desktop and, y’know, earned my salary. When I remembered the Gemini experience I went back and there it was, a fully fleshed out app that did pretty much what I wanted. I realized though that I need to differentiate between Xbox PC games and other PC games so I asked for a tweak:

I just realized I need TWO different PC categories. One is PC Xbox (games played through the Xbox App which qualify them for Microsoft Rewards) and one for all other PC games. Can we add that?

And off it went. Within a few minutes I had a pretty nice looking app:

Screenshot of the main dashboard of the NextPlay app
The Main Dashboard of NextPlay
Screenshot of the Library screen of Next Play
Note that we’re even tracking games with a daily login reward

The little blurb about the game is being pulled in automagically via AI; I didn’t ask for that, but I like it.

Now mind you I haven’t actually USED this yet but so far it looks like exactly what I wanted. I’ll tweak some of the colors (particularly the Playstation tag which needs to be a lighter blue) but it’s really close to EXACTLY what I want custom made for ME.

The downside is, where do I run this? For now I’m running it locally after failing to get it to run on Vercel, and during the troubleshooting for that I realized “before I put this anywhere public we’ll need to add an authentication layer and I’ll have to check the code for any security issues” both of which felt like more than I can take on right now. I’m actually glad I ran into Vercel issues because I hadn’t really thought through the ramifications of putting this online!

So to do: authentication, security check, find a place to host it (maybe just on this hosting account). Not finished yet, but it feels like a really good start!

When Can the AI Come Out & Play?

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~ Pete Smith ~ 4 Comments

I’m falling behind on the AI news, what with our upcoming move and the crazy-fast pace of innovation in the AI space.

So forgive me for just now getting around to talking about SIMA 2, Google’s newest game-playing AI model. My layman’s read is that SIMA 1 could follow learned, game-specific instructions (“turn,” “walk forward,” “use tool”), while SIMA 2 combines that motor-skill layer with Gemini-style reasoning. It can plan, decide what it wants to do, then hand those decisions off to its “action” module that knows how to execute them.

SIMA 2 can also learn new games a lot more easily — both by watching humans and through trial and error. It can transfer concepts across games, too. If it learns “mining ore” in Minecraft, it can apply that idea to Valheim or any other survivalcraft sandbox. To anthropomorphize it a bit, SIMA 1 was following instructions, while SIMA 2 now knows WHY it is hitting a chunk of ore with a tool.

Quick aside about why Google builds these things. The idea is that once they have a model that can learn to navigate and exist in any virtual world it is set loose in, that model can be used in robots to allow them to figure out how to navigate around a factory or a house. To Google this is not all fun and games and it explains why you generally see SIMA 2 playing ‘open world’ and procedurally generated games rather than corridor shooters. Real-world robotics needs improvisation, not scripted paths.

Anyway, if you want the true expert explanation, check the link above. As far as I know, SIMA 2 isn’t something we peasants can play with — it’s an internal Google project.

This is both a pity and a blessing.

Why I’m Glad SIMA 2 Isn’t Out in the World

If a model like this were loose in the wild, just imagine the impact on eSports or MMOs. Gold farmers would have an army of perfect workers. Competitive games would become impossible to police. How would you know if the player demolishing you is a human with insane skills or an AI with infinite patience? You wouldn’t!

Why I’m Sad SIMA 2 Isn’t Out in the World

But on the other hand — and why I selfishly think it’s a pity this isn’t an open model — what if we could have this AI as a companion in our games? I’m sure I’m not the only gamer out there that doesn’t have a crew of friends on-hand to play MP and Co-op games at any hour of day or night, but SIMA 2 could fill in.

It seems to me we’re like 9/10s of the way to this happening. In the video above the human asks the AI what it is doing in-game, and asks it to perform tasks. This seems to be happening via a side-channel, but if you could get the AI to take instruction through the game’s chat channel you’d have an AI sidekick to hang around with.

Of course it’d be tempting as heck to just have the AI do the boring stuff for you. While I’m at work my AI buddy can spend the whole day roaming around harvesting rare materials in an MMO, or grinding out dailies in my gacha games. Then when I’m free I just take over and do all the fun stuff myself.

That would feel pretty cheat-y to me, but man it would be tempting.

In any even, I doubt this genie will get stuffed back into the bottle and sooner or later someone will release an open source version of a model similar to SIMA 2. For now the cost of running an AI constantly while gaming will probably keep things in check, but eventually I do think we’ll have AI gaming companions. This even feels like a legitimate business opportunity to me. In the same way you can now sign up for a service that lets you create AI generated art, you could have services where you could ‘rent’ an AI gaming companion for a few hours. When you make your first million with that idea, don’t forget to comp me a subscription to your service!

Google’s Project Suncatcher is Blowing My Mind

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~ Pete Smith ~ 4 Comments

One of the big challenges of AI adoption is generating the compute required for all the systems. Not just the actual hardware, but the power to run the hardware. We keep reading about deals to build massive powerplants to run the data centers that AI is going to need.

It’s a thorny issue, particularly here in the US where we haven’t embraced renewable energy to the extent some other parts of the world have, meaning our data centers rely on burning fossil fuels.

Google is working on another potential solution. Project Suncatcher is an experimental initiative to explore the feasability of building a data center in space, using solar power.

The idea is to put a fleet of satellites in orbit, flying in formation and talking to each other via lasers. The satellites will be positioned such that they can ‘see’ the sun almost all the time so they don’t need a lot of batteries and such. No cloudy days in space, no nighttime either.

This sounds completely like science fiction, right? But there is speculation that Google could fly a test flight as early as 2027. The big challenge is to bring the cost of launching the hardware down enough to make the system viable, and if the rocket industry keeps going at the pace it is going now, Google projects we’ll hit that sweet spot around the mid-2030s.

I watched a long-ish video about this that goes into the project in more depth, and since I’m far from an expert let me just share this with you:

I find this really interesting not just in terms of solving an AI issue, but also in terms of moving real industry into space. I grew up during the Apollo era and wow have I been disappointed in the lack of progress in space since then. Glad to see private industry is starting to pick up the slack!