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Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

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Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#61

Post by andrepd »

dangus wrote: post #45
andrepd wrote: post #42

We should show this every time a Slack/Teams/Jira engineer tries to explain to us why a text chat needs 1.5GB of ram to start up.

> It won't write your emails, but it can be trained to play a stripped down version of 20 Questions, and is sometimes able to maintain the illusion of having simple but terse conversations with a distinct personality. You can buy a kid’s tiger electronics style toy that plays 20 questions. It’s not like this LLM is bastion of glorious efficiency, it’s just stripped down to fit on the hardware. Slack/Teams handles com…

My Pentium 3 in 2005 could do chat and video calls and play chess and send silly emotes. There is no conceivable user-facing reason why in 20 years the same functionality takes 30× as many resources, only developer-facing reasons. But those are not valid reasons for a professional. If a bridge engineer claims he now needs 30× as much concrete to build the same bridge as he did 20 years ago, and the reason is his/her own conveinence, that would not fly.

Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#63

Post by abanana »

simonjgreen wrote: post #38
nineteen999 wrote: post #9

This couldn't be more perfectly timed .. I have an Unreal Engine game with both VT100 terminals (for running coding agents) and Z80 emulators, and a serial bridge that allows coding agents to program the CP/M machines: https://i.imgur.com/6TRe1NE.png Thank you for posting! It's unbelievable how someone sometimes just drops something that fits right into what you're doing. However bizarre it seems.

Super intrigued but annoyingly I can’t view imgur here

Indeed, part of me wants to not use imgur because we can't access it, but a bigger part of me fully supports imgur's decision to give the middle finger to the UK after our government's censorship overreach.

Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#64

Post by tomduncalf »

bartread wrote: post #62

This is excellent. Thing I’d like to do if I had time: get it running on a 48K Spectrum. 10 year old me would have found that absolutely magical back in the 1980s.

This was my first thought too haha. That would be mind blowing

Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#65

Post by ben_w »

dangus wrote: post #45
andrepd wrote: post #42

We should show this every time a Slack/Teams/Jira engineer tries to explain to us why a text chat needs 1.5GB of ram to start up.

> It won't write your emails, but it can be trained to play a stripped down version of 20 Questions, and is sometimes able to maintain the illusion of having simple but terse conversations with a distinct personality. You can buy a kid’s tiger electronics style toy that plays 20 questions. It’s not like this LLM is bastion of glorious efficiency, it’s just stripped down to fit on the hardware. Slack/Teams handles com…

> Slack/Teams handles company-wide video calls and can render anything a web browser can, and they run an entire App Store of apps, all from a cross-platform application.

The 4th Gen iPod touch had 256 meg of RAM and also did those things, with video calling via FaceTime (and probably others, but I don't care). Well, except "cross platform", what with it being the platform.

Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#66

Post by ben_w »

andrepd wrote: post #61
dangus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It won't write your emails, but it can be trained to play a stripped down version of 20 Questions, and is sometimes able to maintain the illusion of having simple but terse conversations with a distinct personality. You can buy a kid’s tiger electronics style toy that plays 20 questions. It’s not like this LLM is bastion of glorious efficiency, it’s just stripped down to fit on the hardware. Slack/Teams handles com…

My Pentium 3 in 2005 could do chat and video calls and play chess and send silly emotes. There is no conceivable user-facing reason why in 20 years the same functionality takes 30× as many resources, only developer-facing reasons. But those are not valid reasons for a professional. If a bridge engineer claims he now needs 30× as much concrete to build the same bridge as he did 20 years ago, and the reason is his/her…

> If a bridge engineer claims he now needs 30× as much concrete to build the same bridge as he did 20 years ago, and the reason is his/her own conveinence, that would not fly.

By itself, I would agree.

However, in this metaphor, concrete got 15x cheaper in the same timeframe. Not enough to fully compensate for the difference, but enough that a whole generation are now used to much larger edifices.

Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#67

Post by quesomaster9000 »

jaak wrote: post #59
quesomaster9000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear, it seems we've... somehow been psychically linked... I developed a browser-based CP/M emulator & IDE: https://lockboot.github.io/desktop/ I was going to post that instead, but wanted a 'cool demo' instead, and fell down the rabbit hole.

I've been playing the Z80-μLM demos in your CP/M emulator. Works great! However, I have yet to guess a correct answer in GUESS.COM! I'm not sure if I'm just not asking the right questions or I'm just really bad at it!

Don't tell anybody, but you sit on it

Re: Show HN: Z80-μLM, a 'Conversational AI' That Fits in 40KB

#69

Post by bartread »

tomduncalf wrote: post #64
bartread wrote: post #62

This is excellent. Thing I’d like to do if I had time: get it running on a 48K Spectrum. 10 year old me would have found that absolutely magical back in the 1980s.

This was my first thought too haha. That would be mind blowing

Yeah, very WarGames.

EDIT: Actually thinking about it some more…

- Imagine what you could do with 16-bit games of the era with one or more of these models embedded. Swap the model depending on the use case within the game. Great for adventures, RPGs, strategy, puzzle, and trading games (think Elite). With 512K or 1MB of RAM, plus 2 - 4 floppies (which became increasingly common as the era wore on), you could probably do a lot, especially if the outcomes of conversations can result in different game outcomes

- Back in the day nobody was really trying to do anything serious with AI on 8 or even most 16-bit machines, because nobody thought they were powerful enough to do anything useful with. Now the thinking has changed to how much somewhat useful intelligence can I cram into the least powerful device, even if that’s only for fun?

- Imagine showing this running on a CP/M machine, like the C128, to a serious AI researcher working back in the 1980s. Minds blown, right?

- Now spool forward 10 years into the 1990s and think what PC hardware of that era would have been capable of with these limited language models. I wonder what that era might have looked like with something that seems like somewhat useful conversational AI? A sort of electro-steampunk-ish vibe maybe? People having really odd conversations with semi-capable home automation running via their PCs.

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