By Phil Spalding

cambolc.co.uk,  LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook

The world of AI in the Greater Cambridge area just that much more exciting. A little expensive as well. The past 4 days I have visited Cambridge twice and done retail. Worked at the Epicentre in Haverhill and had a very good chat with a fellow AI developer. At the moment the way AI is going to be in at the start and to know it positives and negatives is the way to go. That phrase the early bird catches the worm might apply to the very big companies, an IBM manager was managing expectations on LinkedIn by saying only people employing 9000 or more people could justify the expense. That may be true for some of the costs of using the very intelligent models from OpenAI, Meta, IBM and Microsoft. I do not yet include Google in the very expensive list owing to the fact Gemini is now included in my Google Workspace subscription. Developing AI solutions that are cheap and allow companies to retain full control of their data is the way forward for SMEs.

In addition to upgrading my mobile from a Samsung A14 to a Samsung S24 for use with the AI tools I have already, I have made a number of other acquisitions. Below are a list in no particular order.

The Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB model from the RapsberryPi Store in Cambridge. The assistant from the Raspberry Pi foundation was very knowledge able about the products. She was very helpful. I addition I purchased the AI hat capable of 26 TOPS on it’s HALO chip, two cases one of which was for the Raspberry 5 8 GB model on which I have been running Ubuntu 24. Previously I have purchased the Raspberry Pi AI camera from the The Pi Hut.

The short term project is to have the Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB attached to AI Hat with the Raspberry Pi AI camera. I have had Ollama running the Llama 3 model inside a docker container on the Raspberry Pi 5 8 GB version. The trick will be to integrate these learning steps into one AI machine capable of being run locally.

I saw and bought on, not so impulse but planning for the future, the Rayban Meta Glasses. I bought them from the Sunglass Hut in the Grand Arcade Cambridge on my way to the Raspberry Pi Store. Again the staff were knowledgeable about the product but they did not have the clear lens product or I was not made aware of it while I was purchasing. On getting then back to base I found that my Samsung A14 was not supported on Meta AI. So next day (Tuesday) I was in Cambridge again this time buying a new PAYG EE Sim card and a new Samsung S24 from John Lewis and Partners. I always buy my phones up front rather than on a contract. The Samsung phone insurance included in the calculation works out in the long run cheaper than on a contract. After all I use Whats App, Telegraph and Wifi connections so a £10 a month PAYG 5 G connection for Data and phone calls when not near Wifi is as much I ever need a month. Allied with the purchase of a new Canon Flatbed for turning physical print documents into PDF files for training AI models a busy creative time could be ahead.

The only temptation to spend now is to buy a VR headset for the full experience. That should be all the investment in new technology that myself as Cambridge Online Learning Community. I still like using “old” technology such as my Canon Sureshot 10 and Olymopus E410. The cost for new now does not make as worthwhile as they are still working.