Show HN: Merliot – plugging physical devices into LLMs

I have far more ideas about this than time to execute it, but for a long time I’ve had this fantasy about a robot bandmate.

The idea is I’d go on stage singing and playing guitar with a looper and some samples, then bring a robot toy and introduce the robot “controlling” the looping and sampling as the bandmate.

It’s a gimmick that’s been done before, but with LLMs driving verbal interaction and now I could use this to animate a robot…it becomes pretty compelling. I’d plug the LLMs into the audio feed so I could banter with it and get responses then have the robot avatar animate accordingly.

If only my full time job saw value in this project.

Imagine when you don't need money anymore because everything is automated to oblivion. Everything is affordable. So the kind of people like you won't have to work to make a living, you just do your art instead. Better for everyone!

I cannot understand this optimism, in my industry the profits of automation only flow upwards.

My understanding is that you need the optimists to mention it enough times before the world is ready, because it normalizes the concept in ways that not mentioning it ever (or mentioning it only cynically) wouldn't be able to.

While the profits of tech have also flowed upwards, even average to poor people have much improved quality of life from tech.

I’d prefer much less wealth inequality, but it’s not like the only benefit of automation is profit.