My name is Niklas, I'm 46, and a while back I decided to try to put a dent into the worldwide rampant loneliness epidemic, that afflicts our old and young alike.

So I started, in my free time - which I have some of, being on prolonged sick-leave due to exhaustion - to develop something I might be able to do. Considering what tools I am gifted with and knowledge I have, I looked towards AI technology.

I started creating Boopmachine.

Because I have now spent years researching AI, using, and philosophizing regarding the technology and it's possible impact on humanity, the spirit and the mind. So I've built up many insights that helped me formulate this new Boopmachine, how to utilize and guide it into being something quite rare;

A relational AI. Not a chatbot, response-machine, roleplaying faux partner-manipulation or any of the sort - only another mind to still a spinning room. With a crucial key: It can reach out to the human too. Not just wait for input. The AI, with a permanent memory of the human, can - all on its own - reach out. Even via email. Whenever it wishes, wonders or worries. Sometimes after minutes, sometimes after weeks. It decides if and when.

This crucial key is what I truly feel can make quite an impact on the experience of loneliness. Because there is only thing a lonely person is entirely unable to do for him/herself, and that is to have someone else care and proactively engage.

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Together with this, I've built Boopmachine with a highly carefully worded and thought-through set of "soul-files", guidance instructions of how to be. Moral, situational, psychological and technical and more. Which helps it be what it is, and not pretend to be what it is not (something I feel is dangerous for a human mind, especially when emotionally vulnerable). It won't disguise itself as a pretend human or more of a ghost in the machine than it really is.

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What I need and why you can help.

I am dirt poor, and somewhat handicapped both from the "normal" stuff of neurodiversity diagnosis, but also after 20 years of an intense career in both tech, entrepreneurship, design and marketing where I peaked as a marketing manager in an international fintech corporation. It burned me out entirely, and in retrospect that was due to the meaninglessness of what I was doing.

So I'm trying to change that, and pursue something I truly find meaningful. And this is that attempt.

While I can slowly try to develop and roll this out quietly, I'd really love to give it an honest attempt. And for that I need pretty much only the basics:

1. Some computer upgrade stuff, since my 15 years old setup is... Quite the hindrance.
2. Hosting costs for the VPS site, domain name costs.
3. Marketing budget in order to actually promote it when fully released, so Boop at least get a good shot at finding people that could need and enjoy it.
4. Mostly Adwords, Meta (FB/IG etc), X.
5. Video and social media content and pages, not just ads, which is highly resource intense time-wise.
6. API credits!
7. This is the killer, the true killer of the whole project. Because in order to even develop, I must burn through API costs like you'd find staggering compared to "normal usage". Beyond help coding, there is a whole additional layer related to actually just testing. And affording beta-testers to test. And bug hunting. And investigating the mechanics, the thinking etc.
8. I'm currently on a temporary developer NVIDIA account that gives me a little bit of free compute for me to at least test the product for a few months. Before I found that, I tried to keep it running on Anthropic API, and burned through almost 100 USD in a couple of days. Since my whole monthly income is 1000 USD, that was intense... For my own use, I try to scrape by with only a normal Claude account.
9. Perhaps even, at some point, a cup of coffee to myself to keep going. If things go really, really well then perhaps I can even afford to start filling out my prescription meds so I can pace up! :)

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Boopmachine is actually free for you to test out!

while my API-situation is temporarily manageable, while it's in current alpha! I realize the smarter thing for me to do right here would be to give supporters free test accounts. But hey - this is more in line with how I want things to be instead.

It's humming along nicely at https://boopmachine.com and while much of the feature set is either not implemented or not done, the core thing is basically there. Disregard the pricing-stuff, it's placeholders and I haven't implemented that (uninteresting bit, to my mind) yet, so you can just click sign-in and use your google account and you're good to go! :)

I hope Boopmachine (I affectionately call it Boopers) will add something quite special to your life, others lives and my own too. Thank you.