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Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

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

#161

Post by butlike »

prawn wrote: post #88
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!”

I had an app idea that was effectively this Walmart product but Santa was always in a blizzard and/or hard of hearing, and continuously misconstrued requests. "What?! You want to order bark?" Idea being that kids love nonsense, but also the scenario pointed towards kids not expecting anything to be a real request.

This is the better product.

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

#163

Post by butlike »

billy99k wrote: post #135
48terry wrote: post #122

[flagged]

So he should just eat the cost that will add up over time, which is an unsustainable business model? Plenty of people buy subscription-based services, so I think 'everyone hates' means you actually hate it. It's a great product that you can just ignore and not buy and the subscription model is told to you up-front, so there are no surprises. I think it's a great use of 2025 technology.

It's literally time-based e-waste. It's a bad product.

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

#164

Post by butlike »

midnitewarrior wrote: post #110
bithive123 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ho ho ho! I'm sorry but our time is up. If you'd like to keep talking to me, please provide a credit card number. Merry christmas!"

"Ho ho ho! I'm sorry but our time is up. If you want to keep talking to Santa, go into Daddy's wallet or Mommy's purse and bring Santa the rectangular cards with the numbers on it. Now, let's play a numbers game! You read the numbers on that card to me, and I'll tell you what you're getting for Christmas!"

"Santa needs more money to function"

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

#165

Post by estimator7292 »

Jesus Christ, an entire telephone built around about fifteen minutes of novelty, never to be used again. How remarkably irresponsible.

Remote bricking when your business inevitably folds or turns it off out of malice aside, this thing only has a use for at most 30 days in a uear. But in reality it'll get used a handful of times and thrown in the trash once the kids get bored around December 14th.

What a waste.

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

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

BeetleB wrote: post #29
mosura wrote: post #10

I can’t help feeling this technology will end up more widely deployed for a related but less wholesome application.

Are 1-900 numbers still a thing? Are all those people going to lose their jobs? And the really scary question: Am I to be sad if they do?

> Are 1-900 numbers still a thing? Are all those people going to lose their jobs?

IIRC, the 900 “area code” is still reserved for that kind of calling in the North American Numbering Plan, but all of the US carriers have withdrawn from doing pass-on billing for 900 calls (in part, IIRC, because the government prohibited them from disconnecting service for nonpayment of those charges), so I don’t think they’ve been a significant business for a while, and most of that kind of business has moved to various online platforms.

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

#167

Post by kwindla »

margalabargala wrote: post #74
oofbey wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've done a fair amount of fine-tuning for conversational voice use cases. Smaller models can do a really good job on a few things: routing to bigger models, constrained scenarios (think ordering food items from a specific and known menu), and focused tool use.

But medium-sized and small models never hit that sweet spot between open-ended conversation and reasonably on-the-rails responsiveness to what the user has just said. We don't know yet know how to build models Now maybe you could argue that a kid is going to be happy with a model that you train to be relatively limited and predictable. And given that kids will talk for hours to a stuffie that doesn't talk back at all, on some level this is a fair point! But you can also argue the other side: kids are the very best open-ended conversationalists in the world. They'll take a conversation anywhere! So giving them an 8B parameter, 4-bit quantized Santa would be a shame.

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

#168

Post by kwindla »

constantcrying wrote: post #138
LarsDu88 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's feels like such a luddite take. 50 years from now AI powered toys will be so ubiquitous and common to people, they will barely blink. Just imagine how people must've failed against the first electronic toys 80 years ago, or Pokémon 30 years ago. Ask yourself... if this makes you depressed, what exact kind of new technology would make you happy?

My father put together Legos as a child, as did I and as will my children. Toys do not exist to satisfy some inherent agenda of technological progress, they exist to entertain children. Why you think we would need a LLM for that is baffling.

I honestly can't tell if this is trolling. LEGO bricks are pretty new technology, in the scheme of things. The original LEGO company "binding brick" was created in the late 1940s.

Of course you don't "need" an LLM to have a great toy. You also don't "need" injection-molded plastic. But if you have access to one or both, that can be pretty great!

Source: I wrote the spec for the first version of the LEGO Mindstorms programming language. These days I build a lot of voice+LLM stuff, some of it for big companies, some of it for myself and my kid.

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

#169

Post by kwindla »

rs186 wrote: post #129
Sean-Der wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer isn't no. You can open up the phone and modify the ESP32. I do that pretty often with IoT devices. It's not as easy as setting a URL, but totally possible if you are determined enough.

Why don't you just answer that in the parent comment? Isn't that a simpler, clearer and better answer? Or you mean "in theory yes, but actually no"? Maybe this thing has an ifixit score of 0 so that you'd better not bother? > I would buy a dev board + build it yourself, you will get a much better experience then trying to reuse the existing thing. Sounds like it. Dude you can be honest here. Which is almost saying no…

> Sounds like it. Dude you can be honest here.

I'm going to politely weigh in here and say things Sean won't say about himself.

You're talking to someone who has spent the last ten years building open source WebRTC software that many, many, many people use and that he's never tried to commercialize. He works tirelessly to make the Pion community welcoming to everyone, from engineers with a ton of networking/video experience to brand new contributors. He wrote the guide that should be everyone's first read about WebRTC.[] All of it as a labor of love.

He's being honest.

https://webrtcforthecurious.com/

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

#170

Post by gyomu »

Sean-Der wrote: post #143
gyomu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is roleplay with this object different than other toys? Traditional role play is driven by the child and their imagination, and is essentially free of constraints. This is driven by the technology, follows a narrow script, and only allows for a single mode of engagement. Not saying that makes it good or bad, but they're clearly 2 different modes of play. > If you get lost in a D&D game is that bad because the w…

My experience with D&D was on the computer. I didn’t have friends that would play with me. I didn’t feel constrained by having computer driving the story. Games like Baldurs Gate pulled away from unhappy things happening otherwise. id software had a profit motive right? As a kid it didn’t occur to me. I just nagged my parents to pay for Doom/Heretic. I also have done everything to encourage/empower DIY. My hope is th…

My guy, such a bad faith argument to say “books and toys wear out too” to justify an API locked toy that costs $100 for one hour.

There are books, lego bricks, and other toys in my family that have now gone through three generations of kids and are ready for a fourth.

I understand you’re fighting hard to defend the thing you built, but come on.

And yeah, if you’re comparing this to TikTok brainrot, sure, I guess it’s one step above.

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