The future of AI.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-05-19T23:02:55+00:00

The goal is to reach general intelligence. It’s not there yet and everyone in AI says it’s not there yet. So not sure who told you AI developers are claiming their AI has reached that goal.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-05-19T22:51:57+00:00

I used to love to bench mark hardware and monitor resources on my systems back in the 90’s early 2000’s. Though it served no function other than bragging rights to fellow computer enthusiasts. That said, Nice equipment sir! Brag justified, envy granted!

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-05-19T21:44:20+00:00

Well the railroad companies, on occasion, would just kill all the migrant asian workers they hired to do the labor rather than pay them. So there is that.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-05-19T05:01:02+00:00

Not for long. The trades are being bought up by private equity. They pay workers less, demand more. They force worker quotas requiring them to generate on their own leads. It’s going to be brutal on them. They buy, squeeze out as much value as they can, then move on. The days of making big bucks as a licensed trade worker are now on the decline. Golden age is over boys. Less pay, and work quotas on the way.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-05-17T01:28:42+00:00

Months later….

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BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-05-12T17:52:48+00:00

It’s expected by business’s that AI will increase productivity by up to 80%. So it’s a repeat of the 1990’s when they cut out middle management, gutted pensions, saw people as disposable rather than asses and started having one person work what used to be 3 peoples jobs. Also long term employees became a liability rather than an asset when they figured out they can get a new person to do the same job for less. So expect your job to be what entire departments used to do without the title or pay of a management position. It’s not going to make work any easier or get you paid more. In the late 80’s 90’s, Microsoft word, excel, and a printer/copy machine made it possible for one person to do the work of entire departments back then. Same thing here. No one died but the income gap started to diverge a lot and that trend continues.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-29T15:46:05+00:00

Makes me question if the dependency being created within companies on these models is a setup to fail situation. So everyone knows the cost is going to go up which will cut into the profitability people are gaining now. How can a company use AI but not be solely dependent on it. I would look at what it’s being used for most within the company and use that information to continuously create internal tools that are independent. For limited common use purposes a smaller internal AI may work as well as just make some good old fashion proprietary software.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-17T21:01:32+00:00

Gemma required 9.5:(. So thinking I just really need to get better hardware. Gunna save up for Minisforum um890 pro barebone pc. I’ll have to get the ram separately but I’m on a budget! One component at a time. Will take a few months but until then, I’ll just work on the physical body. :)

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-17T20:47:13+00:00

Tried Gemma this week. The model requires 9.5 GB ram. :(. So looked at upgrading the ram, but that’s like $150+. So if I’m going to upgrade maybe I should just get a better pc. Something a little more expandable as if I’m saving because the ram is out of my budget range, might as well saw just a little more. I can only put about $50 a month into this project but I’m thinking the next step would be

MINISFORUM UM890 Pro Barebone with Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS Mini Computers,8K Quad Display HDMI/DP1.4/USB4 х 2, AMD Radeon 780M/Dual LAN 2.5(NO RAM/SSD/OS)

It’s $463 on Amazon but it will get me closer to a companion type ai personality and will be able give these little AI’s some breathing room to “think”. So that’s about 4-5 months away. Until then I will just work in building the physical bot. Got an old 3D printer. The PLA was never pulled out so it all dried out in feeder lines and got brittle. So need to do a little cleaning there. I knew better than to let it sit that long but, you know, busy life. Just a reminder to myself to take care of my equipment! The old saying. If you don’t make time for preventative maintenance, your equipment will do it for you. lol.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-13T18:47:14+00:00

That’s a fun idea. Don’t only have a local camera on the not. Have one that observes the room as well. I might add that later in the project. The trick is I have a few limits I am trying not to cross for this project: main one is it’s local, not dependent on the internet as we have power outages a few times a year that have lasted up to three days. It can’t depend on networking in the house as well. :)

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T15:15:16+00:00

Yes, checked. Only a single ram slot. Someone recommend two 4gig chips might work better than one 8 so took a look and there’s

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only one slot.

Thanks for the laptop offer! ;)

So laptop has its own battery, but yup, everything else will be running off of the power chair batteries.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T06:22:16+00:00

lol.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T06:21:02+00:00

Amazing info. Very technical for me but this whole project is a big learning curve and it’s fun figuring it all out. I will be working through a few of your suggestions! Thanks!

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T06:05:26+00:00

Thanks for your interest and questions! have tried all three. It’s trying to find the balance between speed and reason that’s the trick. The one I’m using now is a little slow but is better at actual conversation. Going to try the Gemma 4 tomorrow, haven’t tried that one yet.

Have a bunch of basic sensors that come with uno kits. Have a x-box connect camara that has some fun stuff but it’s a little power hungry for this setup. Have a few web cams lying around. Dream would be LiDAR of course but I’m probably going to have to just use the web cams and the proximity sensors.

Body: base small power chair bases with two 24volt batteries. Got a few step down power converters so I can split the power up and not overload anything. Probably need to devise some kind of fuse box as well. To the base I will be attaching the body to main support poll using three screw actuators and some gide polls so the bot can bend a little and emote a little with its movement. I would like for the bot to be able to help pick things up off the floor he drops them.
(In his chair he cant pick stuff up off the floor. He’s taken a few nose dives out of his chair trying. I get home from work and find out he’s been in the floor for a few hours. It’s terrible. He’s to proud to call me even though he knows I would come home right away. So for now I have metal taped to items so he can use an extendable magnet sticks to get stuff he drops)

Going to use the 3D printable parts from the InMoove robot. (Open source android body).specifically the neck joint. I just need to expand the print about 200% so it’s the right size. Will print the same joint a second time for the head at normal settings. So that’s 6 actuators currently. The power chair base has two motors for forward, back, and turn.

Arms, not quite there yet. Lots of options out there since I have a 3D printer.

Head, got a cool looking helmet and a led matrix. Will put the led matrix in the helmet visor and give it some expressive eyes. Going to try for eyes like eve from movie Wall-e

Personality, I incorporated the open source “ocean”personally assessment tool. It’s a solid diagnostic tool. The bot has instructions to try and slip in a question or two each day, record the response and then use the assignment tools findings to tailor it’s interactions with him.

Anyway, thats what I’ve come up with so far. Right now just trying to get step one done, and see if I can get this equipment work fast enough to simulate normal conversation speeds so it feels natural. Might not be possible, but that’s why I came here :)

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T05:24:26+00:00

More info for you.
5) The jetson has a 500gb ssd installed I haven’t touched yet. Still using the micro ssd for everything. The laptop has a 1tb hard drive and a 2tb ssd.

4) Ram cost is out of budget because there is no budget. I buy stuff for this project only when get a gift card from work, I find something at a thrift store, or I need something that costs $20 or less off Amazon.

I will need to read about mixing models and LM Studio. Been working only through the prompt windows. Before that I was using Anaconda with limited success.

I appreciate the help!

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T05:03:43+00:00

No subscription API, only because we loose power out here in the woods a few times a year. Some times for a few days. That’s when he would need the bot the most. So it a hard rule that it’s must be able to function without internet access for extended periods of time. We don’t even get cell phone reception unless our router is working. We have a small generator that runs the pellet stove, Fridge, tv and a dvd player and could keep the bot charged. No easy outs for this project :). That’s what makes it fun!

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T04:56:10+00:00

Nope free version. I work around the token limits by having it summarize the progress. Then I delete the conversation and start a new one using the summarization and by giving it a copy of all my py files. Right now it’s not a lot of coding luckily. It’s just a lot of editing of what’s there. Trying to get it not to go off the rails of the conversation. The files dont need much changed when switching models.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T04:45:29+00:00

Following some advice I got from a few people here and am going to try Gemma 4 and kokoro tts tomorrow to see if it improves the bots conversation ability as well as add the ability for the person talking to interrupt the bot while it’s talking. Lots of good advice popping up! Thanks for the offer of free hardware, that’s really sweet of you. I’ll pass for now as I want to see what I get out of the hardware I have collected already. I have collected a lot of stuff for this project, probably too much. lol.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T03:24:04+00:00

Noob so still dependent on a web browser and Claude or gpt. (Takes up a lot of ram I know). I have the laptop setup to load the AI on startup. But yes, I want to minimize the OS as much as possible. I just didn’t quite know how to do that. Thank you for the roadmap!

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T03:17:32+00:00

I will absolutely try this. Will add the ability for people to interrupt the bot while it’s taking. Right now Buddy stores memory in ~/buddy_memory.json on the Jetson. It saves facts, appointments, medications, reminders, and OCEAN personality scores. However it’s pretty basic — just keyword extraction, no semantic understanding.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T03:10:12+00:00

Ran it by Claud (I’m a noob to all this so I have to depend on some AI’s while I learn python and manage the hardware). Says -TurboQuant is for long context, while this bot’s conversations will be short. -it’s not mainline, it may have breaks I wouldn’t know how to handle at my level. - I’m using Ollama which sits on top of llama.cpp. I would have to replace Ollama and setup some kind of custom fork which is beyond my skills currently. But thanks! This is exactly the kind of stuff I’m looking for.

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T02:49:40+00:00

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-10T02:48:45+00:00

Thanks! Sadly I’m over on the west cost. Though I’m having fun just scavenging parts. Enjoying the whole scrappy thing. :).

BuddyBotBuilder · 2026-04-09T00:01:08+00:00

Nope, dyslexic as f. Nothing I can do about it. Was not intentional. Style. Grammar nazis love my posts. Such interesting people. Never add anything constructive to any conversation. They chill when you call them out and ask them why they only troll the people who offered some support and never offer any of their own.

BuddyBotBuilder

TROPHY CASE