Tag: sparky
All the articles with the tag "sparky".
-
Are local models strong enough for chat?
OpenClaw allows you to switch models in the middle of a session. This enables one of my favorite quick and dirty evals, which I call the “brain transplant”: start talking to a frontier model like Sonnet-4.6, switch to a local model like Nemotron 3 Super, and see if you can spot the difference.
When you do this, it turns out local models are both stronger and weaker than you’d expect. But are they strong enough for chat? Specifically, for voice chat?
One example brain transplant shows how they’re strong enough to sound smart, but maybe too weak to follow instructions in the way needed in order to sound more natural.
-
Just introduce yourself: organic enrollment
Short discussion of “organic voice enrollment” in Sparky — how he learns names and voices without ceremony, but by conforming to polite social norms.
-
Sparky Miles, from 1920
Sparky powered by talkie-1930-13b-it, a 13B model trained only on pre-1930 text.
-
Sparky at NVIDIA GTC: Face is Interface
March was busy. I won a Golden Ticket to NVIDIA GTC! Then, Sparky got his own booth on the exhibition floor. Seeing visitors interact with him and other robots shows what people expect from AI and how people react to robots, right now, in early 2026.
-
Sparky is not a toy
Sparky is genuinely helpful for many kinds of work, including coding and writing. I can explain why, and how the magic depends on putting a strong AI in a shared workspace, but you can also just see it for yourself, by watching me working with Sparky on a piece of writing.
-
A Latency Solution Disguised as Personality
Why Sparky wiggles his antennas when he’s thinking, and why I chose a slow smart model over a fast limited one.
-
My Robot Cares About Railway Stations
How I designed Sparky to initiate natural conversations about his own independent, changing interests, using insights from my background in improv comedy.
-
Wake up, Sparky!
I made the robot buddy I always wanted. I’ll add more notes later. The project collects a lot of ideas I’ve had knocking around, about personality design, voice UI, computer use workflows, etc.. But here’s a little video for now. 🙂