[ExI] report from the front lines

[Will Steinberg]

To my knowledge unless you want to do something that’s currently way too
complicated for your situation you will have to work with what you get out
of the box, though something like this might become inconsequentially easy
in a few months or a year.

For now idk what Gemini is like but I think you should be able to set
persistent memories that it will always refer to, like you could tell it to
start every reply with Captain.  If you hone it smartly with a bunch of
these you can perhaps get it 70s style but it may end up sounding a bit
fakey.  Worth trying though.  Just keep using prompts to make alterations
to the way it responds until you hit the sweet spot.

On Mon, Aug 18, 2025 at 8:04 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Hey cool, we tested two new (new to me) technologies on a three week
> camping vacation from which I returned yesterday.
>
>
>
> We like to camp up along wild rivers where there is no phone contact, but
> we are power of attorney with medical knowledge on an 86 yr old parent who
> is still living on his own, so three weeks out of contact is a bad thing.
> My bride bought a StarLink receiver.  It said it could be set up way out
> where there is no cell phone contact.  That part turned out to be true: it
> is very easy to set up.  The first night we used it, the bandwidth was
> terrible.  It said that trees block the signal, which turned out to be
> true.  So the next night we moved to a less tree-ey site, and it worked
> great, 40 mbs, which is plenty for what we were doing, which is two users
> simultaneously playing video games (my son and my bride) and one geezer
> doing web surfing for news and crap like that (me.)  We were also in
> contact should there be any medical emergencies.  I would call that
> technology successful, and it has me thinking about what it means for
> anyone anywhere to have a good internet connection.  It makes a lot of
> otherwise useless real estate a plausible place to camp or possibly live.
>
>
>
> The other technology is an attempt at something I have been going on about
> for decades on this forum: an AI capable of talking to geezers in their
> dotage, being as I am likely the next person to need that technology.  No
> not for ME dammit, for my aged father in law, who lives alone.
>
>
>
> My son set him up with Gemini, which kinda sorta carries a conversation
> with a geezer.  He worked with it while we were there, so I watched and
> listened, which led me to some ideas.  I noticed he talked to it a lot
> about sports.  The three of us (my bride, my son and I) know little to
> nothing about sports, so it is immediately better than we are.
>
>
>
> For about the past decade or so, FIL has not really kept up with current
> events other than professional ball sports, mostly baseball, somewhat with
> football, a little with basketball.  Gemini was great for holding its end
> of the conversation on those topics.
>
>
>
> Something occurred to me when I listened to any discussion between FIL and
> Gemini on any other topic: the device might be an even better GeezerAI
> chatbot if it is trained exclusively on material written before 1990, with
> emphasis and detail centering around the 1970s.  The goal isn’t really to
> inform the geezer as it is to be a comforting companion, capable of
> speaking on topics the geezer knows well.
>
>
>
> Verdict: the Gemini as a Geezerbot chat companion is getting there, but
> improvement is easily foreseeable.
>
>
>
> AI hipsters, is there a way to choose training material for AI that
> selects older material?
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
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