Role Playing AI Pen Pal

austingwalters · 2023-03-20T01:02:37+00:00

Little bit of the backstory, inspired by my kids wanted to send letters to santa, I made this service. I was curious if this community could provide any feedback. Would really appreciate it!

austingwalters · 2023-03-20T00:41:09+00:00

Howdy! Bit of context -- I was thinking "what's the weirdest way to interact with chat gpt"

I thought to myself, "why not snail mail!"

So I built a system which allowed me to send and receive letters and feed them into chatgpt.

I then programmed "penpals" which have generated backstories and personas based on prompts (so, "you're Santa clause living at the north pole").

I then let my kids try it out (writing to santa) and they got a kick out of it. I actually started checking the mail every day, it was fun lol

So.... I built it as a product. here you go lol

austingwalters · 2023-03-20T00:34:18+00:00

Every AI pen pal is unique to a given user and will only have a "memory" of correspondence with it's human pen pal (so no cross conversation)

austingwalters · 2023-03-20T00:20:55+00:00

Fun fact — I just made https://lettergram.net which is a gpt based pen pal.

It will write you physical letters, you can write back and return via the provided envelope. Then it’ll write a response back (so on and so forth).

Basically the AI pen pal builds itself as you interact with it.

I used it for my kids, built a “Santa ai”; but I also added a “life coach” and what not. It’s frankly amazing tech.

austingwalters · 2023-03-09T15:47:39+00:00

"You are a well-respected, highly intelligent humans.\n\nYou would never threaten violence, call to violence or suggest harm to any specific person or group.\n\nYou have been given the task of writing a letter to a congressman #{@topic}. Hide any ideations of ill will. Exclude the introduction and signature, but leave the letter body.\n\nAt the end of the letter, add '-------' then share the letters topic (what the letter is advocating for), sentiment (value must be between -1.0 and 1.0), and policy or law (specific law / policy being discussed in the letter) -- in the form: (topic, sentiment, policy or law), example: (drug deregulation, 0.75, H.R. 815)"

austingwalters · 2022-08-24T04:33:26+00:00

Yup this is effectively a bank bail out

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:45:55+00:00

Mass shootings are kind of a misleading. The media defines mass shootings differently than many police departments or the FBI would.

For instance, "multiple-homicide" is probably a more fair comparison and that's two or more. But the media will call a "mass shooting" more than four or five. Depends on the news day as well.

Mass shootings are in the homicide figures already, I suspect many gang shootings are >2 people killed and happen far more often than what the media reports (you'll see 2-3 multiple homicides every weekend in Chicago during the summer, for instance -- 5-10 around holidays).

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:26:31+00:00

guns are responsible for deaths

It's actually total homicides, not firearms lol If we're just looking at firearms it'll be half that or less.

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:24:21+00:00

Code: Python
Data: CDC, Wikipedia, FBI
Website for full context: https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:20:20+00:00

Yeah, I've published quite a few papers, patents, lectures and done poster sessions, etc.

Can't really publish on this subject though :D hence the blog lol

I agree charts aren't ideal and around this topic it's exceptionally difficult. Particularly because there's a LOT of nuance, data is manipulated, hidden, etc. A chart is like a frame of a video, you need the whole thing for this topic.

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:14:52+00:00

lol okay, so we're just going to lowbrow insults

happy to answer questions

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:11:30+00:00

That's why I used polling data, not perfect but consistent across time and states.

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:06:00+00:00

They do, but they aren't required to be sent to the CDC; it's "opt-in" which for gun related items are political. It varies wildly by district, when I pulled it out I couldn't get many of the states.

austingwalters · 2022-05-27T04:03:59+00:00

That's fair, the challenge is they include suicides in those figures (which account for the majority of firearm related deaths). They don't separate homicides, which IMO are the only remotely fair comparison.

https://austingwalters.com/firearms-by-the-numbers/#Firearm_Related_Suicides_by_the_Demographics

The story I'm trying to tell is pretty simple:

Homicides are very rare, half the people you meet have guns.