Issue 29 - Video AI Gen & Runpod Hackathons
May 12-19, 2024
Table of contents
Autosearch.lol demo
Shipped a new feature on LuminaLog.com
AGI House SF video Hackathon
RunPod hackathon
On building a personal brand
On what is Muay Thai to me
On why hackathons
On learning about war
On creating new social institutions
Autosearch.lol demo
This week I shipped a new demo of an advanced AI search app. It is intended to speed up research on a new topic and provide more in-depth and accurate results then what perplexity or Google currently does. This is a fascinating field because it can have immense impact on the world if it is done right. I stayed up all night coding it on Tuesday and shipped a demo here:
Next I will make the results even better by making llm calls that check the validity of each statement and evaluate how relevant it is to the main question. Second, I will make the AI create a set of important points as answers to the question and provide supporting reasoning and evidence. Third, it will display all the links and images that came from the result. Finally it will run this kind of research loop using several search engine methods like Exa, Tavily, Google and Perplexity. This way it will be saving time for people by performing this accurate and in-depth research in a shorter amount of time.
It has this nice feature of having past searches and results saved for you to come back to. Next I will add a feature where you can pick up a search, and continue it, so that you can continue going down the rabbit hole. It will show your past search results serving like a knowledge base.
Shipped a new feature on LuminaLog.com
You can now click on the microphone on the landing page and start dictation. Then you can save the recorded text after logging in. It is saved in local storage so when you return after logging in / signing up then the text will still be there. I recorded a demo of this and published it and I recorded a demo of how to use the AI journaling app. You can see the demo here:
AGI House SF video Hackathon
On this warm and sunny Saturday 5/18/2024, I arrived at the legendary AGI House in Twin Peaks around noon at the perfect time to see the talks by the sponsors. I was energized by Vast.ai founder Jake Cannell, talking about how they are building with the philosophy of transhumanism, something I deeply resonated with. Later I talked to him about how this history of this movement has been motivating me to keep going in this space of AI and to think big.
There is much excitement around new platforms like civitai.com which are growing really fast and have a huge community around of creators with AI generator images and video. They are creating on the cutting edge of AI generation technology. Here I met one of the product managers, Matty Shimura from civitai who has a background in film directing. It was fascinating to hear from him about the space of AI video and image creation.
I met a designer that uses comfy UI which is open source tools to create high quality AI generated images. They that are way ahead of what the user applications have to offer. This community of creators with comfy UI is the place where the innovation is happening. Here I met the founders of Fal.ai once again (met them at a previous hackathon in last October). They are creating AI open source model API’s that specializes in delivering fast results. I am excited to build more products on their platform.
Here I teamed up with another hacker and we built a new feature on an app that generates a short film based on user photo and a description of the plot.
We demoed it and it was an achievement to complete the project and demo it. We showed how from just a description of a user, their selfie and a short description of a story plot we were able to generate a short film with voice over narration. We got runner up prize by Vast.ai which is a sponsor that runs serverless GPU’s. It was great to see what the other teams are working on, like one girl created this cool app that scrapes your Instagram, then trains a new image generation model, then generates a short film. At the close of the hackathon it was a great opportunity to chat with the other contestants, sponsors and
RunPod hackathon
The second of three hackathons this weekend happened on Saturday to Sunday 5/19/2024 in downtown San Francisco. I also demoed the same app with some new progress. Sadly I didn’t make it to the top three. Yet it was a good experience. Also met a lot of cool people and learned a lot about fine tuning LLM’s.
On building a personal brand
Creating on YouTube, you have a platform to do so many things. You can be creating tutorials for coding or some other craft. You could give demos of new tools and apps online. You can give updates on your life and describe your journey in this world as a human, having to find a career, a job or a calling.
By creating online you are creating a living document for yourself to look back on your learning, it is a positive reinforcement loop, where you can see what you are doing well, then amplify that, and stop doing what is not working. At the same time you are sharing it with the world, so that others can learn from your work, they can benefit from your work, and it is providing value for the world. In this way you are doing valuable work that you will be rewarded for. This way people out there in the world can find out what you’re doing and they can come to you and offer you some new opportunity.
There are multiple channels that have different trade offs, like write blog posts, post on LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit and other platforms.
Have an intentional effort into growing an audience, this calls for narrowing down your field of expertise and brand. So that when people come across your channel they can know exactly what kind of content they can expect to find. Decide what is the best kind of content for you, that aligns with your deep interests, with your skills and is something that others would be willing to pay for. This really means finding your Ikigai, it means to find what your purpose in life is, that falls within the overlaping areas of what you love, what the world needs, what you are good at and what you can be paid for.
On what is Muay Thai to me
It is a life style. If I spend too much time without exercise then I feel that I am not myself. I feel a motivation to exercise. Being in Muay Thai I practice skills and abilities that are useful in life as they can be critical for self-defense. I feel motivated by feeling my body gaining new abilities, filled with energy, I feel motivated to keep this practice as a very important part of my daily routine.
The sense of persevering through the pain of feeling tired and exhausted to the limit of your ability, and feeling that you are still able to direct your energy, using your whole body, to direct it in a kick or a punch, or a knee. If you are able to find the exact muscle or skill that you want to strengthen, then you can consciously direct your energy to exercising and thereby strengthening and developing that skill. The same goes for everything else in life, especially entrepreneurship. It is up to you to find that muscle that you need to strengthen, those skills that you need to develop. It is up to you to find the courage within yourself, to motivate yourself, to keep yourself from doing the wrong things, to keep yourself doing the things that will make you shine, to rest when you need to and to pursue the things that will yield the results that you want.
It teaches you the right kind of toughness and confidence in yourself that is critical to being an entrepreneur that is able to create new technologies and companies that change the world. Many of the worlds biggest companies were made by regular people that just had the right combination of intuition, confidence, skills and abilities and pursued them with extreme determination and self-belief. That is the great thing about free world, we can all actualize our potential and create limitless wealth and transcend our the limitations of our initial life conditions with technology.
On why hackathons
On Saturday night my housemate asked why I did so many hackathons. I felt that the answer to this said volumes about who I am. I responded that it was the only thing that made me really happy as a kid. When I discovered that I could build things with wires, motors and batteries, legos and other electronics I discovered that I could learn about the world and that I could have a big impact on the world as an engineer and inventor. I sensed the power in this. I started to build things with electronics and then showing it to parents, grandpa, sister, anyone that was around. I stopped doing this when we immigrated to the USA because I did not find any resources here, books or other media, that supported me, and I felt that the culture here was anti-intellectual. It really killed this side of me and I was immensely unhappy.
I loved creating with technology. It is not enough to just build it yourself in your room. I soon learned this as a kid. You need to show it to people. Then you are part of the world community. It is like being a musician. You will not be a good musician if you don’t perform in front of other people. It is about seeing how far you can take your skills. About what kind of impact you have on the world.
Today I continue this practice. I love hackathons. I get to build something, to learn, to meet awesome people, and I get to show what I build to others. There is so much innovation happening here. This is the kind of environment where billion dollar companies will be made and I sense I need to keep going in this way to find out what the new opportunities are and what I have inside of me that best combines in order to build a world changing startup.
On learning about war
We in most every day world do not realize how humanity has walked from conflict to conflict. How the current world order, the system of laws, the social organizational structures are so fragile and only came about as a result of cataclysmic events. Learning about the lives of soldiers during conflicts we understand the human perspective of these large scale events.
There are examples of great bravery, like an American bombardier on B-17 bombing mission, that got hit with with flak, his arm nearly blown off, his stomach cut open, he knew he only had a few minutes to live. It was the critical few minutes before he released all of the bombs and as the lead plane on the mission, all of the other 80-100 of bombers waited until their plane released bombs, to release their own bombs. The blast blew him back about nine feet to the other end of the compartment, he crawled to the front, looked down at the bomb sight, and pulled the bombs release, over the radio only said a faint ‘bombs’ instead of the usual energetic ‘bombs away!’ The bombs of all the other planes in the raid were released next, and it was one of the most successful bombing runs, having destroyed German U-boat factories, destroying 9 U-boats and stopping production for months. He died a few moments later. He was recognized with a posthumous medal that was one of the most rare medals.
There are countless stories like this. All throughout the WWII conflict. It was a massive scale event that has shaped our current world. I keep studying battles and stories from this period as it is important to understand the world we live in. It is truly sobering and life changing to understand what people experienced in these times and that we may face similar situations in our life time.
On creating new social institutions
Imagine a network of organizations for revitalizing civic society in free countries and training for self-defense. This can take the form of a weekly video call meeting, where the plans are established for the organization. Then individuals can take templates off the shelf that have been established for projects they can put into action. For example one can be hosting a community house where school age kids can go after school to do homework, play sports and exercise. This can be built inside an app. Other activities can be like old people social gatherings. Individuals can take initiative to teach skills like martial arts, working out, coding, design and other skills. Tutors can volunteer their time or be compensated by a communal fund in order to fund these activities. USA and other democratic countries need to reinvent themselves, they need to build a new grassroots movement that uses the new technology to connect people, and to reinvent our societies to build a new transhumanist future. It is up to people like you and to imagine this and to make it a reality. You can’t know where it will lead, you can’t build the whole thing right now, but you can start today, with something. Start with a short paragraph that describes it and publish it to the world. Start with the idea of the thing and share it with someone. This little spark can lead to a new world changing movement.
Imagine using the latest AI technology for this. Indeed we are just scratching the surface with what AI can do . Imagine building an AI Town (this is an open source project for a 2D game like Pokemon, where AI agents can walk around and converse with each other) style game where each individual has an AI that can handle meeting and connecting with other people’s AI’s and find the right people, exchange information, and give you summaries on the most important connections, the most fruitful conversations and the most promising connections to pursue yourself.
Conclusion
The main theme of this week was building at hackathons, building a personal brand and launching AI apps to the world. I hope you enjoyed reading. Here is a song that I really enjoyed this week and I hope you will too!
peace out,
Konrad