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Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

walmart.com

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Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#71

Post by rs186 »

Sean-Der wrote: post #50
patapong wrote: post #35

This is such a fun use of AI! Congratulations. If you buy the walmart version, can you connect it to your own pion server?

I would buy a dev board + build it yourself, you will get a much better experience then trying to reuse the existing thing. I have written implementations target at specific boards. So go and buy one of these and boom stick it in anything you want. I have done this for my kids and have a bunch of different characters. My favorite is my daughter has a toy that pretends to be 'the ocean' it is so funny and existential.…

You could have just answered "no".

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#72

Post by nkozyra »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #27
rideontime wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagining the parent who could barely afford this only to discover that it dies after an hour of usage unless they keep feeding the meter is making me very sad.

TBH I kind of doubt this is the kind of toy a kid would request. It feels like something a parent with extra disposable income would buy so they can record a cute video.

Not to get all luddite but can't you just have a relative answer the phone at another house? Assuming they're mentally fit you can rule out hallucinations, at least.

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#73

Post by phyzix5761 »

rideontime wrote: post #22
fukka42 wrote: post #14

> Generous Talk Time: 60 minutes of talk time included, and additional minutes are available for purchase for extended holiday entertainment throughout the season So the thing costs a 100 dollars and then you can only use it for an hour before needing to pay more?

Imagining the parent who could barely afford this only to discover that it dies after an hour of usage unless they keep feeding the meter is making me very sad.

If you're in that position as a parent please save your money for more important things than an AI Santa Phone.

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#74

Post by margalabargala »

oofbey wrote: post #61
architectonic wrote: post #16

How much computing power would one need to get this working completely local running a half decent llm fine tuned to sound like santa with all tts, stt and the pipecat inbetween?

More than you can physically fit in a phone like that. Many hundreds if not thousands of watts of GPU.

That's not true. You could run such an LLM on a lower end laptop GPU, or a phone GPU. Very low power and low space. This isn't 2023 anymore, a Santa-specific LLM would not be so intensive.

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#75

Post by Waterluvian »

Sean-Der wrote: post #53
Waterluvian wrote: post #41

If running out of 60 mins turns the device into a brick, that’s an F-. If it can be restored with a flat purchase, that’s a B. If it first degrades gracefully into a toy with a bunch of pre-loaded audio clips, that’s a big ol’ A+ from me.

Inference is always getting cheaper, so my hope is that restrictions like this can go away in the future. I totally understand giving it a 'B'. But I promise you that I came at this project with sincere hope that I can build something that brought more joy then it cost into this world. I have it at home and I think it's worth the money. My 5 year old uses it and the recordings I got from it I will keep forever. * San…

For what it's worth, I don't see myself as being cynical. I see myself as playing the role of the consumer. I'm holding yours, and every potential competitor's product to a high standard, which I could imagine being seen as a welcome advantage for any toy maker who wishes to distinguish themselves from the competition.

I'm the "I want to pay a premium to buy something once, and to find joy in how every bit of that thing oozes passion and love by its creator" consumer.

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#76

Post by fancy_pantser »

Would love to see this connect to a smartphone running a matching app, doing the inferencing on the phone so you wouldn't have to bill for increments. It will be a few more years until that can be done in a low-enough latency way (improved models, more compute and memory available).

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#77

Post by Sean-Der »

zephyreon wrote: post #56

My biggest concern with a toy like this is that my future kid might ask for a water park in our backyard and then Santa would respond with an enthusiastic “That’s a great idea Kyle! I’ll consult with the elves to see how I can make it happen!”

To be safe I would contact city zoning about the construction of your future backyard water park. Always good to start early :)

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#78

Post by Sean-Der »

RyanOD wrote: post #70
Sean-Der wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already happening! I went to https://vapi.ai/vapicon and the stuff that people are already building is bonkers. It would be naive to think that this technology would only be used for good. I have been working on Pion WebRTC for years though and have see lots of stuff getting built that didn't feel great. Not sure what I can do though.

Care to share some examples? I'm curious...

Vapicon or Pion examples?

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#79

Post by gyomu »

This is why everyone not in technology hates us.

I'm a technologist. I get it, on some level it's kinda cool that we have the technology to bring this thing into the world, and so of course one wants to build it and make it real.

Breadboarding it as a fun weekend project is one thing. But making it exist as a product sold on Walmart.com is another.

What is the point, exactly? I mean this as a serious question to think about, not as a blanket dismissal. Any object, by the mere fact that it exists, demands something from the people it is put in contact with. What behaviors does it encourage, what beliefs does it promote, what skills does it exercise?

If I spend 60 minutes with my kids writing a physical letter to Santa, then going out and putting it in a mailbox, I have a fair sense of the answers to the questions above, and whether those answers are things I want to encourage or not.

If they spend 60 minutes interacting with this object, I'm not so sure I feel so confident about the answers.

Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

#80

Post by Spivak »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #46
tom1337 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be stupid but what are you referring to?

Use your imagination a little; I'm sure you can come up with several variants that are an even viler and more exploitative/manipulative idea than the product as it stands. Let your kid call a crude simulacrum of dead relatives, let religious folks call a crude simulacrum of $DEITY, make an "adult" version that crudely simulates a phone-sex hotline (charge extra to recharge the minutes on that one obviously), etc, etc…

> make an "adult" version that crudely simulates a phone-sex hotline

This is a quaint almost vintage version of the technology that already exists. Why stop at just audio when you can right now have a "video call" with your AI sexbot? If you were worried porn was going to lose it's top spot for pushing technology forward—and backward and forward and backward—to it's eventual climax then worry no more!

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