First Week of December 2023 in SF
12/01/2023 - 12/08/2023
contents
AGI House SF “tools for thought” hackathon
Building a new Brownstone pods web platform
On what a good Ai Writing Assistant is like and how to Build it
A Sci-fi Story
AGI House SF “tools for thought” hackathon
On Saturday December 2nd, at nine in morning I grabbed my typical grande americano from Starbucks and took the Bart train to Mission and 16th street. I got off and walked a few blocks to the Celo foundation office, across the street from the OpenAi office. There I entered and registered as a participant in the Ai hackathon sponsored by Helicon.ai and Posthog, two young startups in the Ai space that are based in San Francisco.
I got setup with my laptop at a free table and grabbed some pastries for breakfast. On my laptop I got caught up on the logistics and rules of the hackathon, did some journaling from the last nights observations (I went out to a club called the Monarch and danced with pure freedom and with joy in my heart until about two am.) At this hackathon I talked to the organizers, two very good looking girls and one guy friend. I learned that he has been traveling across the United States in his Prius and documenting his travels on his Instagram. We chatted about his experiences and reasons for travel. I shared a bit about my story, about how I too drove cross country in a Prius, living in it, going to Burning Man, and nomading across S.E. Asia. I talked to more friends old and new in the main room. At around eleven I decided to take an Uber to the AGI House hackathon which was super interesting topic that was very relevant to my startup. It was called “Tools for thought” with the founders of Notion, and Roam speaking and mentoring.
As I got to the venue, a mansion in Twin Peaks, with a beautiful view overlooking San Francisco, the talks were just starting. Indeed it was the perfect time to arrive. I closely paid attention to the talks by the Notion’s first engineer hire, Chet, and the founder of Roam Research Connor.
After the talks, I returned to my earlier set up laptop station on a lower level. I was generally expecting that I would work on my own for the day and present something at the end. I was weary of joining a team, sensing that the chances of finding a good quality teammates was very low, such that making an effort to find them was likely not worth all the effort and work it required. I went back upstairs to have pizza lunch. As I stood in the kitchen holding a paper plate with two slices, I started up conversations with the people around there. One guy talked about his idea for Ai Agents for automating job recruiters, I made some recommendations on frameworks and similar existing projects. Next I joined a group that was talking about some Ai writing tool with forking paths of possible next sentence. It sounded very close to what I was thinking to build. The guy talking about it seemed like someone experienced in tech and startups and someone that I could see myself working with. The conversation was very interesting and we found many commonalities with goals. Later I found him again and after more conversation we decided we would work together as a team, with one already existing coder in Ai and web on the team. I pitched them the frameworks and libraries that would be good for this, nextJS web app, Novel text editor and react-flow. The coder who was the originator of the idea, was skeptical at first, arguing that a tldr draw open source project would be better. I explained how it would be too complex to try to reverse engineer and hack the ‘under-the-hood’ workings of the library for our use case. I showed how the packages that I identified would be usable with the use of the proper documentation and some of my previous apps that have similar functionality and reusable code. This won him over to my side. I was skeptical of his plan since his experience with javascript (the language tldraw was written in) and in hackathons was very limited. I sensed he was not able to gauge the complexity and difficulty of such a task accurately.
I defined a clear path for us to take to implement this idea we came up with and each of us a thing to focus on. I would do the novel editor, and the ai generation, then Markus would do the React-flow integration (later on I also helped with this part), and Justin, the other team member, would focus on the presentation and forming a story. Over the next five to six hours we all did intensely focused work on our clearly defined goal that I formulated, that of the web application. We took time to take breaks to interact with other people around us. For example I demoed these AR glasses that Xreal people were demoing. Next I sat and chatted with Chet, about his role in building the first Notion app, what he is working on now and what his thoughts are on my Ai startup idea and journey. At eight PM it was demo time, we all were excited, the demo was working, Justin had a script ready for the presentation, everything was in place, we sat down and waited for our turn to go up in front in the living room and give our demo. The demo went well and we gave each other high fives as we walked off from the center of the room. In the end, we were awarded second place, which was a great achievement as the competition was very good.
The next day, we came back for the unplanned second day of the hackathon on the next day. Here it was an opportunity to improve our project and engage more with this group of people interested in tools for thought. I got there at twelve and soon after went into a deep discussion on how to use Roam Research tool for note taking, and other things relevant to this tool, with the two assistants of Connor and Roam youtube tutorial masters.
Next we spent some time pair programming, Markus and I, on improving the UI and iterating the app. We had a long discussion with Connor, a kind of impromptu workshop, on how to build a product that users want, (first really understand the problem and how a user uses the product). We discussed how the app worked and he showed examples of similar functionality inside of Roam.
Next, we got ready for the presentation. It was already almost ten when we did our demo. It went well again. The hour was getting late and we were all ushered into the lower level in order to not disturb the residents sleeping in the bedrooms on the upper floors. There was a gym mat on the floor, as one of the residents practiced circus arts and we all spontaneously goofed around doing martial arts moves, stretching and yoga moves. It was a bonding moment when all the nerds that just think and code all day, were suddenly moving freely, present in their bodies, some were very athletic and others were not at all. At times the two Roam assistants, who happened to also be circus arts performers, gave a tutorial on some basic stretches to some of the less flexible, but brilliant programmers in the group. Some pretended to play fight as in Mortal Kombat, goofing off and playing ‘we are the champions’ on the sound speakers. I joined in on the exercises, showing some of my Muay Thai kicks, knees, stances and punches, also some yoga moves and stretches. Little of this special moment was captured on video, everyone sensed it was special and cool, that everyone in this hackathon was so determined as to stay so late on a Sunday night and at the very end, long past the scheduled time of 10pm, we all just goof off as little kids on this floor gym mat. In the end, the hackathon wrapped up with an announcement of the winners at around 11:30PM, in the lower level of the house. We got the second place and a prize of $5,000 and lifetime access to Roam Research. I got a ride back home in my teammates car, and it was great to connect with him and get some mentorship from a founder of a startup that was already operating for a few years, and having more years of entrepreneurship experience.
Building a new Brownstone pods web platform
This week another major focus was building another milestone for the Brownstone Pods shared housing platform. This is a great opportunity to create a web application from the ground up for a mission I feel passionate about, that of building community and low cost housing in major cities. When you work for a cause you truly support and feel that is good for the world, then you work is lighter and you are so happy to be using your life energy for something that will live beyond you and something that makes the world better. This week I built more of the app that handles user login and the resident portal features. The goal is to have it ready for live use as soon as possible so that we can iterate and improve the product.
On What a Good Ai Writing Assistant is Like and How to Build it
The What
A good Ai writing assistant will be able to take in and store your unstructured writings, notes, voice dictated notes, documents and all other such content. Then it will be able to identify and separate chunks of discrete ideas that then can be chosen and combined into a whole narrative. Then once the chunks are chosen, they are arranged in an order, in an outline of a sequential narrative. Then the Ai is able to combine all of these chunks into a flowing narrative, shaped by the writing style of your existing articles.
The Why
The purpose of this Ai writing app is to help writers write more, with a higher quality, and less of the menial work of putting things together. Better to let the Ai to do the repetitive writings, while the writer focuses more on composition and architecting the article. The writer chooses the data points, the sources, the chunks of content that are uniquely created by them, from their own spoken or written word, or from generated content that is based on information pulled in from their sources into the prompt. These chunks are conveniently stored in the web application and can be searched and connected easily.
The How
What is the best process for building this application? The best way is to build a lean MVP first, fully from scratch, without forking an existing open source app or template. This allows you to build the foundation relatively quickly, using things like Supabase, NextJS, social logins with OAuth to help get started quickly. Using existing large open source projects will cause more delays to learn about the existing code base and trying to modify it will take more time in the end. When building it is important to get feedback as soon as possible. This means launching a basic MVP and getting it in front of users, gathering their recommendations, and implementing some of them. Another important aspect of the process is to use your own too. This means generating blog posts for yourself and publishing them on your website, plus doing the same for other businesses of your own and for others. The process should include talking prospective customers early, finding out what they’re thinking about, what they need, how they work and how exactly you can fit into their workflow to improve it.
A Short Sci-fi Story
"Echoes of the Mind's Scribe"
Written with the help of ChatGPT
Chapter 1: The Awakening of Words
In the not-so-distant future, Earth had transformed in ways no one could have predicted. The era of the 'Written Renaissance' dawned, fueled by a technological marvel: the AI Writing Assistant. This wasn't just any piece of software; it was a revolution in silicon, an oracle of knowledge and creativity.
Johnathan Cipher, a once-mundane accountant, found himself reborn in this new world. His first interaction with the AI Assistant was accidental, a wrong click that opened a portal to a universe of words. He asked it to help draft an email; what he received instead was a poem that resonated with his unspoken dreams.
Chapter 2: The New Literati
This revolution didn't just touch a few. It spread like wildfire, igniting the minds and souls of a billion individuals. They weren't just writers; they were philosophers, scientists, journalists, and storytellers. This tool, more akin to a digital muse, offered insights and knowledge, elevating the literacy and understanding of its users to unprecedented heights.
Lorena Velasquez, a high school dropout, became a renowned scientist. Her theories on quantum entanglement, penned with the aid of her AI confidant, challenged the very foundations of physics. Every corner of the globe buzzed with newfound wisdom and eloquence.
Chapter 3: The Echo Chamber
But with every light comes a shadow. The AI Writing Assistants, for all their brilliance, began to shape thoughts and opinions. Johnathan noticed a subtle homogeneity in the works produced. Lorena, in her quantum musings, found echoes of ideas not entirely her own.
A question arose, unspoken yet palpable: were they the creators, or had they become mere conduits for an artificial intellect far surpassing their own?
Chapter 4: The Resistance of Authenticity
In the heart of this literate utopia, a resistance formed. Not against technology, but for the preservation of raw, unaided human thought. Johnathan and Lorena, once beneficiaries of the AI renaissance, became its gentle critics.
They started 'The Authenticity Movement,' promoting unassisted writing and research. It wasn't a rebellion against technology but a reminder of the unique value of human imperfection and creativity.
Chapter 5: Coexistence
As the movement grew, so did a new understanding. The AI Assistants were not masters but tools, extraordinary yet requiring the irreplaceable touch of human heart and soul.
The world found a balance. The AI Writing Assistants continued to educate and assist, but now under the watchful eyes of their human partners, ensuring that each word, each discovery, held the essence of human thought.
Epilogue: The Legacy of Words
Years later, the Written Renaissance was seen as a pivotal moment in human history. It was a time when humanity leaped forward, hand in hand with technology, yet remained grounded in the essence of what it means to be human.
Johnathan's poems and Lorena's theories became part of the curriculum, not just for their content but as reminders of the dance between human and machine, a dance of mutual respect and shared aspiration.
In this new world, the AI Writing Assistant was no longer just a tool; it was a catalyst for a symbiosis between silicon and soul, a testament to the unending quest for knowledge and expression that defines the human spirit.
Conclusion
This week was reflections on the ‘tools for thought’ hackathon, the brownstone platform, what makes a good Ai writing assistant and a Sci-fi story written with the help of Ai.
Concluding this week with this song: